


The Only Study of a Prince

by RedheadAmongWolves



Series: For Which We Were Born [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Gore & Violence, Case Fic, Holden is Will and Hannibal's Son, Implied/Referenced Suicide, In a way, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder Family, Murder Husbands, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, remains to be seen - Freeform, this is Hannibal y'all so it's not too surprising, will he stay that way?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24060946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedheadAmongWolves/pseuds/RedheadAmongWolves
Summary: Thirty-three years after he disappeared into the ocean, Will Graham has resurfaced, telling of Hannibal Lecter’s return.Their son, Holden, whose true parentage remains undetected in the ranks of the FBI, must come face to face with the darkness inside him, the one kindled by his fathers but stoked by his own curiosity and bottled fury, and finish what was started all those years ago, fire and brimstone fall as they may.This is Holden’s Becoming. His cliff’s edge.Jump, or get pushed.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: For Which We Were Born [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735834
Comments: 153
Kudos: 267





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This didn’t just grow legs, it grew arms and antlers and probs also untwisted itself from a heart in a church in Italy am I the only one still hung up on that scene lmao cool !! 
> 
> this is the sequel in my Hanni/Mindhunter crossover universe, so the title I gave this in my drafts was “fasterer horses” lol but the actual title comes from Machiavelli’s The Prince: “War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to controve, and furnishes as ability to execute military plans.” Sweet darling murdery Prince Holden wow.
> 
> A 33-year time jump post-Hannibal made some characters particularly old even with the most liberal estimates of their ages on the show lol so we’re rewinding their clocks just a wee bit and having the OG cast be a little bit younger during the events of Hannibal than they canonically are! Holden is still 29 as he is in Mindhunter. I also changed up my headcanon origin story for Holden from Faster Horses, making him adopted rather than wordlessly both Hanni’s and Will’s, but we’ll get into the details in the prequel (YUP). Lastly, ‘tėtis’ is Lithuanian for father I’m 94% sure, so that’s Holden’s name for Hannibal, and ‘dad’ is for Will !!
> 
> Ok ok that’s enough from me have fun!! AHHHH IT’S ALIVE

It’s the middle of the night when the phone rings. 

It’s the motel phone, shrieking in its cradle on the little table between their beds. Which means it’s either the night manager calling to complain about something, who knows, maybe their car is parked in a handicap spot or on top of a cat, it was late enough when Bill had finally thrown the car in park and they’d slumped blearily into the motel lobby, Bill tossing money on the counter and the clerk tossing back a key. When they’d staggered into their room, Holden had face-planted on the duvet cover and been out in seconds. Hadn’t even managed to take off his shoes. Now, he considers letting the phone continue to ring out of spite. 

Or, it’s the only other entity who’d have this motel number, from the list of approved stops along their road school tour: Quantico. And Bill must have the same thought and be quicker to register it, the army man ever more accustomed to shrill wake up calls, because he’s cursing and fumbling at the night stand, nearly taking out the lamp judging by the ruckus, before the ring is silenced and Bill grunts hello.

There’s a moment as Bill listens to the mysterious caller, and the quiet almost lulls Holden back to sleep, into the arms of a dream set somewhere in a golden vineyard, when he hears Bill’s voice. 

“Holy shit.” 

The backs of Holden’s eyelids bloom red as Bill flicks the lamp on. Holden grumbles, burying his face deeper into his mattress, when a sudden weight lands on his shoulders and startles him from his doze. Bill’s chucked a pillow at him. 

“The fuck—” Holden starts to huff, lifting his head to glare at Bill, but Bill waves his hand sharply, signaling for silence. It must be serious. Holden sits up, dislodging the pillow and shaking the fog from his head as best he can as he watches Bill’s face. He’s listening intently to whoever’s on the other end of the line. His eyes are owl-wide. 

“You’re kidding me, right?” Bill finally says, and Holden swings his legs over the side of the bed, leaning closer. 

“What is it?” he whispers, but Bill shakes his head again. It must be big. Really big. Fuck, Holden wishes he’d been the one to answer. He glances around; his jacket is slung over the back of the little desk chair, but otherwise their exhaustion last night had been a blessing in disguise, because their bags are still neatly packed and waiting by the door, ready to go. 

“Yes, sir, understood. Have you notified Dr. Carr?” A pause. “Call her next, she’ll be able to get there sooner. She’ll secure everything and set up our equipment. Put him through processing, but don’t—” he grimaces and rephrases, likely so he doesn’t sound quite like he’s barking a command to a superior, meaning it’s probably Shepard. Thank God they’re still in spitting distance of Virginia. “We ask that no one else speak to him until we arrive. Preserve the crime scene, if you will.” 

The caller says something else, and Bill nods. “Absolutely.” He squints at his watch. “We’re about four hours out, but I’ll make it three.” 

He hangs up and sets the phone back in its holder. The air conditioner kicks on overhead, loud in the ensuing quiet.

“Well?” Holden prompts. When Bill looks up, disbelief is too small a word for the expression on his face. 

“You’re never gonna guess who just showed up at Quantico.”

“Who?”

Bill huffs a laugh, and it comes out a little strangled, a little desperate. Holden braces for the world to tilt beneath his feet. 

“Will fucking Graham.” 

The world doesn’t tilt, it implodes.

It’s been four months since Holden sent the postcard. The invitation. He knew his fathers would make their way to the States eventually, but he didn’t know when, or how they’d be making their entrance. 

Will Graham strolling casually into Quantico like not a day had passed since he’d walked its halls as its most infamous profiler was not what Holden was expecting, but it does mean his fathers have a game afoot, a game in which Holden is delighted to partake. And _terrified_.

He trusts them enough to trust him to make his own decisions, but, as Bill speeds them down the empty interstate, headlights splashing the predawn darkness stretching blind and impalpable ahead, he can’t help feeling something _volatile_ is beginning, something that just might blow the lid off the very carefully kept secret of his lineage. This is his very own cliff’s edge they’re hurtling towards, he knows, on the other side of the dark, as much of an heirloom as he’s likely to receive from two men who left their whole worlds behind for one they could carve together.

They make it to Quantico just as the sun is breaching the horizon, and are met at a jog through the taped-off entrance by Wendy and Shepard, who look as manic as they probably do. Holden had barely cast a glance at his reflection back at the motel before dashing out to the car and can only guess at his level of dishevelment, but at least he doesn’t have to pretend to look bewildered.

Skipping over any pleasantries, Wendy speaks first, words basically tripping over themselves in contrast to her usual cool composure. Holden notes absently that she isn’t wearing any makeup. “We’ve got him in an interview room and the tape is all ready to go. He hasn’t said a word to anyone since we got here.” 

“Who found him?” Bill asks.

Shepard answers. “Night guard. Came running when he heard glass break. Said Graham was just standing in the lobby with his hands up, calm as you please, but the guard didn’t recognize him until he introduced himself. Kept him at gunpoint when he did.”

“Yeah, because it’s been _thirty-three fucking years_ ,” Bill rumbles. “We sure it’s him? Not just a crackpot?”

Wendy nods. “His appearance doesn’t match exactly with the last known visual, but I’d know him anywhere. Though he has a… scar. It’s,” she hesitates, and Holden can see her unease stirring under her skin. “Unsettling.” The sun is coming up, but the monsters under the bed are only solidifying. 

They keep moving, weaving through the halls that are bustling for such a strange hour of the day, but Shepard’s reasonably called in the whole cavalry, even though no one has any idea of what’s coming. Even thirty-three years and two all-but-stamped death certificates later, names like Graham and Lecter get that kind of response, and it feels like the whole building is holding its breath. Their little group gets more than a few stares as they pass by. The weight of this moment increases on Holden’s shoulders, sending goosebumps prickling up his arms.

“We have a game plan?” Holden makes himself ask. He’ll stick to the FBI’s script until he finds out which role he’s supposed to be playing when he steps into that interrogation room: son, or adversary. 

The question makes Shepard grimace. “You were our first call,” he says in answer, giving Holden a— what, apologetic? When has Shepard ever looked apologetic?— sideways glance. “But our second was—”

“Crawford,” Bill finishes for him, stopping in his tracks, staring ahead.

Holden follows his eyes and lo and behold, the second ghost of FBI days past manifests before them under the fluorescents. Holden understands Shepard’s expression now— they’ll have to hand over the reins, because the scorned king has returned.

Jack Crawford looks just as Holden remembers him, left in his musty living room with his wall of a nervous breakdown plastered behind him, only instead of his frayed sweater he’s dressed in a faded suit, his shoulders high at his ears and his eyes narrowed as he peers back at them, his papered wall replaced by red-stringed bulletin boards of Holden’s own making. His hands are clenched fists at his sides, but, Holden notes, he doesn’t look as agitated or out of place as Holden would’ve expected. He looks ready. And, further distinguishing him from the agents scurrying around him, he looks unsurprised.

“He was right,” Holden voices. “Will Graham’s alive. Which means—”

“Lecter might be too. We figured the best thing to do was call Crawford in. I don’t think anyone wants to talk to Graham as much as him, you two included.” There’s a small commotion a few desks away, and Shepard curses, darting towards a secretary waving a phone. “Give me a moment,” he says, leaving the four of them to stare at each other. 

“I’m surprised he waited,” Holden mutters to Bill under his breath, and Bill huffs his agreement. 

“I asked him nicely,” Wendy tells them imperiously as she steps around them, crossing the distance and reaching out a hand to lightly touch Crawford’s elbow in greeting, and the man gives her a small smile in return. It doesn’t fit his face. Holden bets he hasn’t had much occasion to smile in thirty-three years. “We agreed it might be better to diffuse the tension if Graham meets with strangers first,” she nods to Holden and Bill, “before introducing a familiar element. Crawford will watch with Shepard and me in the observation room until we see fit.”

Holden smothers a smirk into an earnest smile as he moves forward. “Makes sense to me. It’s good to see you again, sir,” he says, extending a hand for Crawford to shake. The man does, only after a split-second pause, which Holden is sure only he’s noticed. At least Crawford hasn’t forgotten Holden either, or his parting words. 

It’d been a small thrill of victory in the moment, but now he mentally kicks himself, wondering if he’d hinted at his cards too soon. He wasn’t expecting to be present for Crawford’s metaphorical or literal evisceration. Hopefully Crawford’s too used to being haunted, that he doesn’t recognize when the ghost is actually breathing.

Stepping back to let Bill and Crawford shake hands, Holden peers over Wendy’s shoulder to the interview room. The blinds on the door are pulled shut to keep out prying eyes. It gives the impression of a curtain draped across a cage. 

“Any advice, sir?” Bill is asking beside him. Bill hadn’t been impressed by Jack Crawford and his deterioration either, but he’ll still play the submissive underling to get on his good side, for which Holden is grateful, if it means he can grab onto his coattails if Crawford is resistant. 

The man’s voice is as gravelly with disuse as Holden remembers, but it doesn’t waver when he replies. “As much as I want to believe Will Graham is a victim in this situation, his solo appearance leads us to suspect he’s had some degree of autonomy over the past thirty years.” His words sound rehearsed. “He was always unpredictable, even when he was batting for our team. Don’t lose control.”

Shepard reappears, this time with a stenographer with curly blonde hair and candy-red lipstick in tow. They’ll have the tape recorder running in the room, but it’ll be good to have a backup transcript, though the girl standing before them looks like she’s fresh out of secretary school and still wet behind the ears. If Crawford thinks Holden is young, this girl must be an infant in comparison. Yet here she is, her first job to record the words of one of the most notorious missing persons in American history. 

Holden gives her a smile he hopes is encouraging, and she lifts her nose an inch higher. Maybe he looks worse than he thought. 

A file has appeared in Shepard’s hands, which he passes to Bill, who opens it and flicks through its contents with a cursory glance. It’s thick, but it’s not even a fifth of what the FBI has relating to the Will Graham they knew and employed, because Holden’s seen this file, under the guise of research back when he first started the program, and he bets Bill has, too, and knows how useless it is. There was a lot that had been redacted, omitted entirely, or conveniently misplaced. And it had had its own cliff’s edge, once Will went over his. 

Thinking back to the graveyard of files in Crawford’s living room, Holden wonders if the man will contribute his own theories to the case, or if he’s sitting on them until he deems fit. He’s on trial as much as Will is, to prove his own mental stability against thirty-three years of exile. At the moment he stands rigidly beside Wendy, his back to the door of the interview room. Every muscle in his neck looks tensed. 

“Right then. Our objectives are to find out what Graham is doing here, why he’s doing it now, and if Lecter is alive. If he is, then we want to know where he is, and how we can apprehend him,” Shepard lists. “Let’s hope Graham is here to turn them in.”

Even if Holden weren’t privy to why exactly Graham’s emerged from the shadows, he’d find it highly doubtful the man would give up more than three decades of freedom just to hand himself over now, but he doesn’t vocalize his doubt. It’s written across all the faces in their little circle anyway. 

Pulling the standard interview questionnaire from his briefcase to add to the file, Bill asks, “What are we offering Graham in return for information, if he’s withholding?” 

“Immunity,” Crawford answers. Everyone’s heads swivel to look at him, but no one argues. Whether it’s guilt talking or Crawford really believes that strongly that Will Graham is blameless, or maybe both, Holden can’t tell, but a darted glance at Shepard’s grim expression confirms he’ll pull every string he’s got to get Graham Crawford’s promised immunity. Shepard may not have been the director who kicked Crawford out on his ass, but _that_ guilt seems inherited with the job. 

Taking the unspoken cue to start the show, Wendy holds open the door to the observation room for Crawford and the stenographer. Shepard moves to follow, but Holden clears his throat to get his attention, deliberately ignoring any warning glowers from Wendy and keeping his tone deferential, like a kid asking for another cookie. “Sir, I know we’ve spoken about sticking to the questionnaire, but I think, given the gravity of the situation, it might be best—”

“Do whatever the fuck you need to do, Ford,” Shepard interrupts. “Just get the bastard talking.”

He pulls the door shut behind them, leaving Bill and Holden alone in the hall. 

The lights buzz ominously overhead. The office is lined with windows, but the sun is still just barely peeking through the glass, so the room is cast in a muted yellow, and Holden can’t tell what the color means. Are they in the center of the sun at a new dawn? Or are they about to be burnt up? 

Facing the drawn blinds of the door’s sliver of a window, Holden finally catches his reflection in the tinted panel, and he cringes: his hair is unruly, his eyes just shy of spooked. He scrapes a hand through his curls to shove them back and tries to school his expression, but there’s a war rioting inside him between excitement and fear, relief and anxiety that he can’t quite quell. His blood hums in time with the lights. On the other side of that door sits the man who raised him, a man he hasn’t seen in over a decade. Letters and phone calls can only do so much— will he look like Holden remembers? Will age have been kind to him? Will the Holden before him measure up in person to what his dad expects him to be?

He reaches for the door handle, but Bill grabs him by the arm and tugs him back a step before his fingertips can brush metal. 

“They’re waiting, Bill,” Holden starts, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard by the agents and secretaries and interns a few feet away, but he’s privately grateful for the moment to breathe.

“Just— hold on a second.” The file crinkles as Bill’s grip tightens around it, and Holden zeroes in on the other man’s blanched knuckles. At least he’s not the only one feeling in over his head.

“Will Graham is alive,” Bill says slowly, like he’s tasting the syllables on his tongue. “Do you know what that _means_? It means the past thirty years of behavioral work are fucking null and void, Holden. We have to rewrite the canon we’ve based the entirety of our research on. This is proof the bad guys can still stay a step ahead of us, even when we think it’s our game, when we think we’re pulling apart their methodologies and ripping up their playbooks.”

He’s looking to Holden for reassurance, Holden realizes suddenly. Holden’s the one who started this, or at least picked it up from where it’d fallen from Jack Crawford’s hands; he’s the one who dragged Bill into his world of fanaticism with all things dark and craggy, so Bill is looking for him to guide them. No one is privy to Holden’s internal freak-out, so he has to go on pretending he’s the same stubborn, headstrong, serial-killer fanboy he was only hours ago, before the phone had rung and changed the trajectory of his life. All their lives. 

So Holden slides the mask back on. He is his fathers’ son. If there’s anything he can do, it’s adapt. Sink or swim. Eat or be eaten. 

“I’ve never been very good with sports analogies—” Holden begins, cutting off with a teasing grin when Bill glares. “Relax, Bill. This introduces new data, sure, but it doesn’t change anything. They’re still predictable. They still have all the tics and patterns and pressure points we’ve encountered before. Will Graham is a legend, sure, but at a legend’s center is still a man. And men are vulnerable.” 

_Wrong_ , his tėtis says in his head. They are so much more than men. 

The creases in Bill’s forehead don’t disappear, but they do lessen. Holden’s grin broadens. 

“If you want your sports metaphors, fine: the field is the same as it always is, and the goal is, too. Get them talking.” Holden tilts his head towards the door. “Once these guys start, they can’t shut up, remember?” 

A pause, before he’s finally given a nod and the hand drops from his arm. The anchor disappears, but Holden isn't swept out to sea again. 

“Okay,” Bill says, mostly to himself, then again, more firmly. “Okay. But be careful. If the stories are true, this guy can get in your head just as well as you can get in his.” _We don’t need a repeat of Speck_ , his eyes say, but Holden assents easily. 

“Alright. Ready now?”

Bill shoots the door an apprehensive glance, but he straightens his shoulders and stands a little taller. “Fuck it, yeah. Let’s go meet the creep.” 

Holden opens the door.


	2. Chapter 2

When he was little, Holden had nightmares. 

Almost every night, starting when he was six and finally learned that the way he and his fathers lived wasn’t normal, that his parents called each other different names in public for a reason, that not everyone knew what human flesh tasted like. His parents were careful not to let Holden see any of their kills when he was young; maybe they didn’t want to traumatize him, or maybe they just wanted to make sure he could stay quiet before they let him into their world completely, but he was raised on the outskirts of a tiny Italian town anyway, rarely allowed past the perimeters of their secluded estate unless accompanied, and he didn’t know any different. 

His fathers were his teachers, the dogs his playmates, their land his own private kingdom. He had access to as many books in as many languages as he could possibly read, he had his fathers’ stories and art and cooking. He wanted for nothing. You can’t miss what you don’t know exists, and when you finally learn it exists, you wonder its worth compared to what you have. 

The nightmares, when they came, weren’t about what they were doing, or why they were in hiding. The nightmares were about getting caught. 

Holden first saw the inside of a police station the same day he learned the truth, when he’d been separated from Hannibal’s side at the weekly farmer’s market. Usually, going to the market was a family affair, but as spring started to shake the frost from her shoulders and summer started pressing her face against the windows to see through the fog, the tourists started filtering in, too, and Holden picked out the accents in the village like his tėtis selected apples: supple French, mottled German, tart Russian and crisp American. That fateful Sunday, Holden’s dad declared he’d stay behind to start opening the house to the warm air lolling through the vineyard, and Holden and Hannibal would make the trip to the village without him.

Despite the weather, Holden was still bundled into a jacket and a hat was pulled low over his ears, and Will pressed a kiss to the knit at Holden’s brow before shooing him out to join Hannibal on the path. Even now, Holden remembers there was something new and indecipherable in his eyes as he watched Holden go.

Other than their reduced trio, though, it was an ordinary outing like any other Sunday before, only when they arrived at the cobblestone streets Holden saw the bustle of the market was amplified tenfold, visitors flocking to see the old world Tuscan summer in its early blooming. He gripped Hannibal’s hand tighter, earning himself a smile and a wink from high above, before he was led into the crowd. 

Holden stuck to Hannibal’s side for a long while as his tėtis collected ingredients for the next week’s meals, occasionally handing Holden smaller items for him to hold while he paid, like a slim bag of parsley or a bundle of pink flowers. Holden usually drew quite a few smiles from the vendors and shoppers, which he realizes now of course the presence of a rosy-cheeked toddler was an excellent diversion from the murderer in their midst. Holden would duck his head when the local ladies would try to pinch his cheeks, pressing his nose into Hannibal’s pant leg and earning coos at his shyness.

Then Hannibal paused at the next stall and released Holden’s hand to inspect a cut of veal, conversing with the butcher. Holden stood quietly and waited, when a smell caught his attention. A few tables down stood a display of roasted nuts, and Holden found himself drifting forward, drawn so close their sugary sweet smell turned acrid, but when he’d turned to ask Hannibal for some coins he realized his tėtis was nowhere in sight, swallowed up by the crowds. 

Holden didn’t cry out. He darted forward, dodging legs and bags and shoes, but all the men looked the same from his level, and the voices got louder as he tried to find his tėtis’ among them, the languages turning harsh and confusing and unplaceable like a radio fritzing. The market went blurry and sideways in a rush of colors, and Holden was convinced the world was ending, until a heavy, meaty hand landed on his shoulder.

It was a poliziotto, who took Holden to the local station, but it was a tiny building, barely big enough to hold their bullpen of desks and commotion in the midst of tourist season and subsequent rash of pick-pockets, so they set Holden in an empty interview room and asked him questions that Holden couldn’t focus on: his parents’ names, where he lived, where he’d last seen them, but Holden bit his tongue and trembled so hard his teeth rattled in his skull. 

The police station caged around him in a grotesque mash of stone and metal, familiar and unfamiliar, and it was made stranger by Holden’s childlike fear, the darkly dressed men towering above him, severe and large and cold contrasted to his fathers’ enveloping warmth. Cigarette smoke coiled thick and blue and suffocating in the air and made Holden light-headed. Finally the poliziotto had left him to sit there, and sent a man back to the market to see if anyone was looking for a lost little boy. Holden kept his eyes trained on the door, and waited.

It felt like he was there for years, but it must not have been even a half-hour later when the door swung open, only it wasn’t Hannibal who came swooping in, but a pale-faced Will, crossing the tile and scooping Holden into his arms so fast Holden went dizzy. He buried his face in his father’s neck, and Will held him back just as tightly. 

Will had smiled politely at the officers and thanked them for their help, but when they stepped out into the sunlight again, Holden still gripped unyieldingly in his dad’s arms, his dad went grim-faced and silent, marching them all the way back to their villa without relaxing his hold. Holden had assumed he was angry with him for having lost track of Hannibal, and he was on the verge of tears when his dad finally set him down in the entry of their house, closing the door firmly behind them. The lock slid into place with a clang. 

Will had looked so surprised to see the unshed tears in Holden’s eyes. He’d crouched down and smoothed a warm, work-rough hand across Holden’s cheek, giving him a soft smile that crinkled his face like a candy wrapper. 

“I’m not upset with you, sweetheart,” Will had murmured, and a shadow cut across them both as Hannibal appeared at the end of the hall, wiping his hands on a dish towel. Holden watched as his parents watched each other, communicating silently, before Will sighed and nodded, turning again to Holden.

He took Holden’s hands in his, callouses chafing against Holden’s skin. “We have something we need to tell you, Holden,” he’d said. And Holden’s world didn’t change, but Holden did. 

The nightmares came, and didn’t go away, for weeks and weeks. He hid them from his fathers as best he could, not wanting them to think he was afraid of them, because he wasn’t, not really: the monsters in his dreams were never his fathers, but the policemen, sliding through the windows of Holden’s bedroom and looming over his bed as enormous, faceless shadows, blue smoke billowing out their noses as they breathed, and they reached for Holden with gnarled claws, snagging at his face, his clothes, and Holden would try to run but he’d throw open the door and find himself in the station again, and his parents would be in that tiny, airless room, calling his name as the shadows surged to smother them from view. 

Finally, he woke up one night mid-shout, and the door to his bedroom swung open, both Will and Hannibal hustling in, flicking on the lamp and flooding the room with light. They’d climbed into bed with him, wrapping the blanket snug around his shoulders and murmuring soothing words, until Holden’s bones finally unlocked and Will was able to pull him snug against his chest, enfolded in his arms, the safest place in the world. Through chattering teeth, Holden told them about his dreams, and Will had only smiled at him with something like relief as he tugged him closer. 

“No one is ever going to take you from us, sweetheart,” he’d said into Holden’s hair. Hannibal had breathed in deeply on his other side, inhaling their shared scent, and placed a strong, steady hand on the back of Holden’s sweaty neck.

“And if they try,” Hannibal continued, squeezing gently, as calmly as if reading a bedtime story, “we will destroy them.” 

The nightmares stopped, though Holden still hasn’t been able to smell roasted almonds without feeling nauseous.

As the years have passed, Holden has wondered if his tėtis had separated them that day at the market on purpose. He had no doubt then and no doubt now that Hannibal loves him, and loves him deeply; but he does suspect his tėtis had tired of keeping their secret. After all, they had left America so they could be free. It wouldn’t do to mince words in their own home. 

Now, Holden opens the door to the interrogation room, and his childhood nightmare is thrown in stark relief, only this time, Holden isn’t powerless as he watches his fathers consumed before him. This time, he is the shadow. 

He blinks, and the room resets itself. It looks the same as it always does, as it does no matter what town they find themselves in: small and colorless and brightly lit, the fluorescents overhead gleaming harsh and sickly off the stainless steel of the table at its center. There are two empty metal chairs waiting for Holden and Bill to take their places across from the room’s sole occupant. 

Wendy was right: Will Graham doesn’t look like his last known visual. But he does look as Holden remembers. 

He’s seen the pictures of his dad before his final escape from the States. A handsome man with thick dark curls and glasses, sometimes with a beard, sometimes clean shaven, likely depending on his mental state. He’d been the same man in Holden’s youth, the only exception being the dark hair slowly sprouting crests of silver, starting at his temples. Even with Hannibal dictating most of his wardrobe and grooming habits over the past years, one of many compromises granted during their marriage, he still has his bookish air, and if Holden didn’t know him, didn’t know better, he’d think the man before them was still a coveted Quantico professor, here to conduct an interview himself. He’s clad in an expensive-looking dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his glasses have been taken from him, giving him no hiding place from eye contact, but also giving the object of their focus no relief from the piercing steel gaze. Eyes that can see right through you. Eyes like Holden’s. 

But the most striking feature of his face, as Wendy mentioned, and as Holden hadn’t realized until just now that he’d been so desperate to see again, is his dad’s scar. 

It cuts along his right cheek, tilting upwards from his lip towards his temple, like a crooked Glasgow smile. It’s not particularly long, but it is deep, and the scar tissue, despite Hannibal’s best attempts to prevent it, has healed thick and mottled, a white burr in the thatch of Will’s beard.

It is the only flaw in a face creased with laugh lines and crow’s feet from a long retirement of smiling, and being unafraid to smile. Amidst these, the scar is almost negligent. A different Will Graham might have slouched under the scrutiny such a mark brought him. This Will Graham sits with his shoulders back and his eyes glittering. 

Eyes that turn to Holden and show no sign of recognition. 

The breath evaporates in his lungs, and for one petrifying second, Holden thinks his dad doesn’t know him. The thought is chased away in the next, because that’s ridiculous, obviously— he’s only acting. To their left looms the two-way mirror, behind which stands their little audience, obscured from view by the tinted glass but watching every move with unblinking rapture.

 _Follow the script_ , Holden chides himself. _Play the part._

He steps further into the room, and Bill follows. 

“Good morning, Mr. Graham,” Holden greets. The chair legs screech painfully against the cement floor as they sit. “I’m Special Agent Holden Ford.” In his head, he parrots the words he gave Bill: this is any ordinary interview with a criminal. Let them think they have the high ground, while you steer the conversation. “Thanks for coming in to talk to us. This is my partner—”

“Special Agent Bill Tench,” Bill introduces himself. The file lands with a thwack on the table between them, but Will doesn’t pay it a glance. His gaze slides like liquid off Holden to focus on Bill. 

With a finger that miraculously doesn’t tremble, Holden clicks on the tape recorder between them, and the tape starts whirring on its tracks. “Mr. Graham,” he begins, “this conversation will be recorded, and as this is an active investigation, what you say here can be admitted to a court of law, but my friends have graciously agreed to offer you full immunity for any information you can provide, in hopes of encouraging an open dialogue beneficial to both parties. Do you have any questions for us, before we begin?” 

There’s a soft metallic jingle as his dad’s hands, cuffed to the underside of the table, reach up and flex against its surface, accompanied by the creaking of a chair as Bill shifts his weight— an unconscious response to a more threatening predator. 

“Active investigation?” Will echoes, and Holden feels something in him unlock and release as the voice washes over him. It’s vaguely accented, adopted over years in discussion with Hannibal and speaking Romantic languages in their travels. Holden grew up with the same dialect, but he’s since measured it into a carefully flat accent you can’t place from anywhere in particular, hence everyone’s surprise when he tells them he’s from Brooklyn.

“Re-activated,” Bill clarifies. “Your case was almost declared cold in the event of your presumed death, but there’ve been a few people holding a candle for you here and there along the way.” 

_One person,_ Holden silently amends, _and they chased him off for it._ Will doesn’t look towards the mirror, but he does incline his head in its direction. “That’s very kind of them,” he says. So he knows Crawford is here and watching. 

Then, Holden is struck with a thought: he gave his fathers Crawford’s home address. They could have gone and killed him in his bed while he slept, or tormented him in his own kitchen, and leave his corpse to become dog food with no one the wiser. But what, Holden rationalizes, and has to suppress the urge to bare his teeth, is the fun in the kill without the hunt? Meat doesn’t taste great scared, but it tastes a hell of a lot better than when stewing in its own sweat and misery. 

He catches the watery silver of the mirror in his peripherals. It is only one more illusion of privacy, and Holden can break that, too. 

“Yes, it is, so we don’t want to take that kindness for granted, do we?” Bill says. “What brings you here, Mr Graham? Are we feeling reflective in our old age? Coming home for one last confession?” The thinly veiled insults toe the line of rudeness. 

Will inhales slowly, tilting his head back, almost as if he were scenting the air. “Confession implies absolving sin,” he remarks. 

“Do you consider yourself without sin?” Holden asks, and a small thrill dances down his spine. It’s almost like one of their epistolary conversations, or even better, their discussions back on the verandah, watching the clouds and waiting for whatever was in the oven to finish cooking. He’s missed his fathers’ philosophical debates, has tried to find their kin in a dozen dialogues with monsters since, but nothing compares to the real thing. They’re all just copycats of the original big bads. 

Will exhales through his nose. “I think guilt is a waste of time.” 

“How have you been spending your time, then?” Bill queries. “Where has Will Graham been the past thirty-three years?”

The man just smiles. It tightens the skin of his cheek. There’s a long pause before they realize Will isn’t going to answer the question, so Holden changes gears. “That’s quite a scar.”

The smile broadens, if anything, and Will’s expression goes fond, dipping into the shallow waters of a memory. “Thank you. It’s not my favorite, but it does catch the eye.” 

“Which is your favorite?” 

“My husband—” 

“Husband?” Bill scoffs. “Who officiated?” 

“ _My husband_ ,” Will repeats, “is an artist. I’m happy to serve as a canvas.”

Where Will’s memories are a river, Holden’s are crimson-flicker flames, and a red-stained photograph begins to flare to life in his mind’s eye. Before Holden can give it oxygen, though, Bill is straightening in his chair. “ _Is._ So Lecter’s alive.” 

Will doesn’t disagree.

“Where—” Bill starts, but Holden interrupts because the question is too base, too asinine, _think bigger, Bill._

“Is he painting a picture now?”

The approving smile Will grants him feels like he’s being given a treat for performing a simple trick, like one of the dogs, but something inside Holden preens anyway, delighted to serve as a conduit. 

“And you’re the subject,” Holden continues, and he lets his imagination fill in the gaps. “I can see the setting. It’s very romantic— you left during the night, right? So now you’re returning at night to draw it to a close. Finally letting the sun rise.” He thinks to the sun creeping its way through the glass walls of Quantico. “And what does the morning look like?”

Will appears to mull over the question. “Like a new beginning.” 

“I thought we’d be reaching the end of the story by now,” Holden counters. 

“It’s true that every good story needs a conclusion, and it’s true we’re here to make sure all the heroes and villains have their rightful ends. However,” Will lets his steel eyes settle on Holden, and there’s that familiar feeling, of being pried open and emptied of all his secrets. “We’ve found some of those ends have… frayed, in our absence.” 

Bill leans back with an attitude that’s almost smug, but Holden finds himself mimicking Will’s posture, straightening his shoulders and echoing the arch of his brow, and it’s like pulling on an old favorite sweater. “Are you the heroes or the villains?” 

Will motions to the manilla folder, still sitting innocuously on the table between them. “What do you think, Agent Ford? Or, better yet, how do you see yourself?”

Holden has to remind himself to blink. “Me?” 

“You’re the one who filled Jack’s shoes, but they were a little too roomy, weren’t they? So you tried mine on for size,” Will quirks an eyebrow right back, “and they were a perfect fit, weren’t they, Goldilocks?” 

His tone oozes contempt, but Holden recognizes the belittlement for what it really is: code. _Whatever clue you find will point you away from who you’re looking for._ By comparing them, Will is telling Holden to draw a line in the sand, hitch his horse to Jack Crawford’s wagon, make Crawford see him as an ally and not another Will Graham to keep his eye on. And he has to do it fast and loud, so there’s no mistake. 

But _why_? What is Holden in his fathers’ plan?

Holden opens his mouth to respond, but Bill swoops in, probably sensing another Speck incident fast approaching like a train veering off its tracks. “How about we cut to the chase, yeah? What are you doing here, Mr. Graham? You know you’re handing yourself over to us by showing up in the middle of the night, and we’ve got the entirety of the FBI coming out of the woodwork to catch Lecter. You’re not exactly holding all the cards here.”

Tearing his stare from Holden’s, Will concedes with a put-upon sigh. “Think, Agent Tench. I am on display. What are any of Hannibal’s displays intended to do?” 

_Draw Jack Crawford out into the open, put Holden in his path._

“Deliver a message,” Bill replies, and when he’s given a nod, he points towards the tape recorder, spinning on its track between them, then towards the mirror. “So what’s your message? You have an eager audience, I promise you, we’re on the edge of our seats.” 

_Earn Jack’s trust, get him where they want him._

“I’ll give you a hint. Hannibal takes away his victims’ organs because they don’t deserve them. What does it say that he let me keep mine?”

 _Take everything from him_.

_Create a new beginning._

The flicker at the back of Holden’s mind, doused with gasoline, roars to a bonfire and abruptly, he realizes what he is supposed to do. 

Holden has to kill Jack Crawford. 

For a second time that morning, the world shatters, and just as quickly knits itself back together. In those scant few seconds, Holden makes a decision. 

If Holden is going to convince Jack Crawford that he isn’t a threat, if he’s meant to fire the blank that starts the race, dismantling the world he’s built for himself in the process, in the name of something Bigger, then he wants the whole building to _quake_ with it. If Bill thinks another Speck incident is coming, why not give it to him; he and Wendy and Shepard might have Holden’s head later, but Holden finds he doesn’t really care. 

“You think you’re safe with him?” Holden asks. He folds his hands on the table in front of him, the picture of inquisition, and it isn’t hard to let the fascination, the morbid curiosity color his voice. “I mean, I get it, all these years have got you feeling secure, but Dr. Lecter’s no stranger to the long game, is he? And certainly not where you’re involved.” He selects a pressure point, and squeezes. “How many clocks did he make you draw, in the end? What does he have you drawing now?”

There’s the tiniest twitch in Will’s left eye, the only warning before he’s transforming before them, his face of ease and confidence twisting dramatically and suddenly into something dark and angry and— there’s no better word— monstrous, and the chain of the cuffs rattles like a snake’s tail as it pulls tight to restrict Will’s tilt forward. 

“ _You_ think you’re safe with _them_?” he growls, jerking his head at the mirror. “Hannibal’s not the only cannibal in town, Agent Ford. The FBI has a way of swallowing everyone and everything in their way. You better start thinking for yourself or you’ll get stuck in their teeth, and take it from me: it’s not fun to be digested.”

But Holden’s shaking his head before Will’s even finished. “You don’t seem to give a shit about all the people _you’ve_ spit out along the way. You want to talk about villains?” he accuses. Flipping open the file so fast the paper cracks like a whip in its arc through the air, he jabs his finger against an ink-filled page. “Molly Graham died of ovarian cancer twelve years ago. Never remarried. She kept your name, though, did you know?” Holden needles. He slides his finger further down the sheet. “Walter changed his— didn’t want that kind of stain. But even that couldn’t keep him off cocaine. Molly spent her whole savings on rehab after rehab until she died, but it was useless. Probably his spiral of shame of having such a father.”

“Stepfather,” Will corrects immediately, though he looks the teensiest bit remorseful beneath the fury in his eyes. Still, Holden feels a petty twang of satisfaction at the distinction. Dead daughters, fake sons, but Holden’s real, Holden survived. Holden will make them proud.

“‘ _Stepfather,’_ ” Holden scoffs outwardly. “You might like us to believe you’re a monster like your _husband_ , Mr. Graham, but you’re nothing more than a coward who ran away from his responsibilities, then blamed everyone else for his weakness.”

Will snarls. “I’m not the coward. And I didn’t run away. I saved myself, because the ones I trusted threw me into the line of fire again and again, like I was nothing. Negligible. Finally I learned to believe when people show you who they are. Hannibal may have lied to me,” he cedes, “but it was only so I could see the truth.” He snaps his head to stare directly at the mirror. “He’s the only one who ever gave a fuck about my happiness. Isn’t that right, Jack?” 

It’s like Holden can sense it happening before he sees it, or even hears it: he can feel Crawford barreling out of the observation room like a giant’s footsteps shaking the ground as he tears the few steps down the hallway and— there’s the turn of the handle— bursts into the interrogation room, the frantic shouts of Wendy and Shepard following after him. But because he knew it was coming, Holden doesn’t turn to watch like Bill does, instead keeping fixed on Will as his dad looks to him, just in time to see the small flicker of pride in his dad’s eyes, echoing his own mirth, and he knows if Will could wink, he would. 

Tension stretches breathless and thin in the room. You could break it with the tap of a fingernail. 

It fractures when Will slowly faces Crawford, and Holden watches as the wrath dims under his skin and is replaced by icy apathy, cutting and cruel, and Holden bites his cheek so hard he tastes the familiar metallic tang of blood. 

“Isn’t that right, Jack?” Will repeats. 

Crawford opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, words strangled like there are hands around his throat. Will’s fingers twitch, like he’s imagining it too. 

Will speaks. “Heroes, villains, reluctant fathers, reluctant sons— we’re all paying for our inheritances. You see, Agents, I’m the first in Hannibal’s sounder.” He grins, manic and vicious, his scar a brilliant white, like fangs, like bone. “Who’ll be next, I wonder?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh snap oh boy oh wow
> 
> thank you so much for all the love and support so far, it is so so so cherished
> 
> update tomorrow!!
> 
> I don’t own Hannibal and/or Mindhunter and don’t profit from this fic, disclaimers disclaimers disclaimers


	3. Chapter 3

The interview ends pretty quickly after that. Will is hauled off to a holding cell deep in the bowels of the building, the stenographer scurries off considerably more wide-eyed than before, and Holden has to set his little life-changing revelation aside for a moment as the rest of their little party is corralled into Shepard’s office, though the door is barely closed behind them before Crawford whirls on Holden. The man has no trouble finding his voice now. 

“In case you were wondering,” Crawford spits, “ _that_ was losing control.”

He’s projecting, Holden knows. Crawford’s embarrassed about coming up against the man he’s obsessed over for thirty-three years, more, probably having envisioned this moment a hundred thousand times only to freeze like a deer in headlights when it finally arrived. Holden could almost pity him. When he speaks, it’s gentle, like he’s soothing a wild animal.

“I know it’s not what you wanted to hear from him, sir, but I had a theory. I had to dig.” Holden looks to Bill for backup, which Bill doesn’t give, too busy fixated on Will Graham’s file, open in his hands. “Pressure points.” 

“At least we’ve obliterated any question of his innocence,” Shepard sighs, slumping into his desk chair and scrubbing a hand down his face. “And, lacking in decorum as it may have been, we know their objectives.” 

By the window, arms crossed over her chest, Wendy gives a grudging assent. She still doesn’t like when Holden’s unconventional methods prove effective, not when it proves her wrong. “He said he’s the first in Lecter’s sounder. He may not be dead, but it was a surefire way to kill the old Will Graham. And ‘frayed ends,’ ‘a new beginning.’ This is their final move to clear the board of anything remaining of their past lives that could pose as a threat to their current one.” 

“What current life? I don’t know what insane idea they have in their heads, but Will Graham is spending the rest of his life in a tiny room with no doors,” Shepard huffs. “Immunity won’t go far in the face of a court-ordered psych eval. I’ll admit him myself.” 

“Better lock the door and throw away the key,” Holden chimes. His voice sounds distorted in his head. The adrenaline of the interview is wearing off now, and Holden feels like his limbs are made of jelly, all the warmth of pumping blood leaving him in a rush, and there’s a throb starting behind his eyes, probably a migraine ignited by stress and interrupted sleep and a lack of caffeine. He wishes he had some ibuprofen. There’s a bottle calling his name in his medicine cabinet back home.

“Let’s make a list of loose ends, then. Agent Crawford, I think it’s safe to say you’re on it. And Walter Graham, for another. Do we have the name of his rehab facility?” Shepard points to Bill with a pen, and Bill finally closes the file with a short clear of his throat. 

“Not in here. But Graham didn’t seem too worried about him.” 

“We’ll send a protective detail just in case. Lecter already sent Dolarhyde after Graham’s other family once, maybe he’s still bitter. Who else?”

“Dr. Alana Bloom would definitely qualify as a loose end, and her son would be that end fraying,” Wendy adds. “I did a summer residency under her in university, I can reach out to her.” 

“Bedelia Du Maurier,” Crawford speaks up. “She was their last known victim in the country. They roasted her leg. Made her eat it with them.” 

He sounds as hollowed out as Holden feels. Thirty-three years trying to convince himself Will Graham was innocent, only for this to happen. Holden takes a small step towards him, hoping it looks like an aborted effort to comfort. It must, because Shepard’s next decree is in his favor. 

“Alright. It’s a start. And it’s time to feed the dogs, so Bill, you stay with me for a press conference. If Hannibal Lecter is prowling around, the public needs to be on high alert— the more eyes we have out there, the faster we’ll catch the son of a bitch. Dr. Carr, you follow up your lead with Bloom, and Ford, you take Du Maurier. Agent Crawford, would you be willing to accompany him?”

Crawford looks like he’d rather swallow nails, but he nods, and Shepard stands, signaling the meeting is over. “Good. First, though, we’re taking an hour break, but not a millisecond over. Go home, shower, change— Ford looks like he took a go in the electric chair. And for fuck’s sake,” he raises his voice for his secretary to hear, “can we get some coffee?”

Wendy volunteers to give Crawford a lift back to his FBI-funded hotel, to Holden’s private and Crawford’s noticeable relief, and she gives Holden the address to pick him up at later, just as a secretary hands him Du Maurier’s. Bill and Holden head back towards their own car, and stepping out into the cool morning air reminds Holden it’s somehow only been an hour since they’d arrived. The rest of the world is blissfully unaware of what they’re waking up to. But they’ll know soon enough. 

Bill hasn’t said anything to Holden since they left the interrogation room, but Holden can tell he’s vamping up to something, so Holden waits patiently, as ever. It isn’t until Bill’s unlocked the car and they’ve slid inside that his partner clears his throat. 

“What you said, earlier—” His fingers flex on the steering wheel, but he hasn’t turned over the ignition yet. “I’ve read that file, Holden. There’s nothing in there about Molly or Walter Graham.” 

Ah. Holden had been hoping he hadn’t caught that. He’d had a loosely sketched excuse at hand earlier, when he’d seen Bill reach for the file after Will had been escorted out, but suddenly finds it out of reach in the wake of his adrenaline crash. 

To buy time, he tries a laugh, but it comes out shaky. “C’mon, Bill, it’s the biggest case of the century. I did my own research in college. You can’t toss a rock in Quantico without hitting someone who did.” He wishes Bill would start the car. Their hour break is ticking. Crawford probably wouldn’t forgive him if he’s late, and he’s got to get the ball rolling on winning his favor.

“But Molly Graham refused to speak to the FBI after Graham disappeared, and those are some pretty personal fucking details you had there. What kind of research are we talking?”

They’re talking seventeen-year-old Holden arriving in America and looking up Molly Graham, finding her in treatment, and charming his way past the nurses to stand at the foot of her hospital bed, watching her sleeping form where it lay grey and withered in the starched, sterile sheets, and taking the liberty of browsing through her clipboard. They’re talking Holden darting out of view when her only visitor stumbled through on her final day, a tall, skeleton-thin man with bruises for eyes, and following him back to his junkie den, watching him slide a needle into the crook of his elbow and slip from reality. 

Holden had thought about leaving him to rot, had played out the half-life in his head of a useless body returning to the filth it belonged in, but instead he’d wrangled an arm under Walter’s form and dragged him to the emergency room, begging for help for his ‘brother,’ and after that the specifics were easy to dig up, papers handed freely to Walter Graham’s sole living ally. He’d left Walter in the hospital with no one to call, and the smug satisfaction of being the victorious son.

But he can’t explain this to Bill, obviously. He carefully lowers his hands to his lap to stop them from twitching nervously through his hair. He and Bill have spent enough time together over the past months— Bill knows his tells by now. 

“I befriended a few nurses at university, and they helped connect some dots.” _Keep it vague_ , his dad says in his head. _Too many particulars draws suspicion. Deflect, throw them off the scent._ “What does it matter, Bill?”

Bill pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head like he’s clearing away fog. “It doesn’t, I guess. Fuck, I’m sorry, Holden, I’m just… overthinking. I have this feeling something terrible is about to happen.” 

Hannibal Lecter is on the loose, of course something terrible is about to happen. “Whatever’s coming, we’ll face it together, okay?” 

His partner nods, and finally, finally, turns the car into drive. “Okay, Holden. Okay. Let’s hope we don’t end up eating our words.”

Poor choice of phrase, Holden thinks, but it’ll do. 

When Bill drops him off at his apartment, Holden has barely a half-hour left before he’s meant to pick up Crawford, so he showers fast and changes into fresh clothes that don’t match last night’s sleep-lines still imprinted on his chest. He switches on the coffee pot as he scurries off to shave, before doubling back to make a larger brew so he’ll have an offering of goodwill to give to Crawford. 

It’s a miracle he doesn’t nick his skin as he razors away stubble with trembling hands. He doesn’t have time for a full freak-out quite yet, but he can’t reasonably expect himself to be able to think of anything else. There’s Bedelia to contend with soon, yes, and while Walter and Molly Graham may have been Will’s ex-family, Bedelia is Hannibal’s, and with Hannibal’s predilection for collecting more… _perceptive_ characters, Holden wonders if her ability to detect person-suits is still as strong as it was in the days of their Italian romp. Will she call his bluff? She called Hannibal’s, but not until it was the only move she had. The game continues, chess pieces advancing one by one across the board, moved by some invisible hand. 

But that seems small fish compared to his marching orders. The fact remains that Holden’s never killed anyone before. Not… recreationally. 

God, how did his fathers ever do this? For tėtis it’s second nature, probably even first, but Will grew into his capacities for death and deception. Holden, too, was trained to hunt, taught to fish, was allowed to witness the inner workings of his family’s particular brand of crazy, but he was never handed the knife to make the killing strike. That was more Will’s decision than Hannibal’s, he’s certain. They wanted him to be able to protect himself if the occasion demanded, but Will didn’t want him to become another Abigail, unspoken as that reason was. 

Will, understandably, valued autonomy. They weren’t to play God with their own son or groom him like a pet. They would learn from the mistakes of their pasts, not repeat them. Even now, the handle of the knife angled his way, it is Holden’s choice if and how to wield it. 

Finally, his watch face tells him it’s time to go, and clean-faced and scrubbed shiny, he pulls the protective tarp off his car and starts towards the hotel with twin travel mugs of coffee safe in their cup holders. 

He fiddles with the radio at every red light. Should he play music? Would Crawford prefer silence, or the excuse not to talk? As much as it sets his teeth on edge, Holden needs to worm himself into Crawford’s graces somehow. 

The man is waiting at the curb when Holden pulls up in front of the hotel, which he observes isn’t a rundown motel like the FBI usually tosses their way during road school, but a proper hotel, with multiple stories and probably a pool and sheets that pass black-light inspections and free breakfast in the morning. 

He leans over to unlock the passenger side door, and as Crawford lowers himself inside, Holden is reminded, suddenly, of Crawford’s age: he really is just an old man, comprised of creaky joints and cold bones. Will and Hannibal are still sprightly for their years, and a small, childlike voice inside Holden wonders quietly at myths of wendigos, because Crawford in comparison is a wilting leaf on a stripped bare branch— it’s a wonder he hasn’t fallen off yet in the face of his inevitable winter. 

Maybe he’s lived so long so Holden’s fathers could pluck him off that branch. Or Holden could. That voice inside Holden murmurs something about destiny. 

“I didn’t know what your hotel had, so I brought you some coffee,” Holden says after Crawford nods his hello. He’s spared from eye contact by navigating back into traffic. “But I wasn’t sure how you take it.” 

To his surprise, Crawford actually picks up the travel mug and takes a cautious sip. “This is fine, thank you,” he says, though he grimaces, not at the taste but like thanking Holden is akin to prying teeth.

“You’re welcome,” Holden returns anyway. But then conversation dies between them again, leaving just road noise as the city streets give way to tree-lined highway. 

It’s the first time he’s been alone with Crawford— properly alone, not “alone” but with someone steps away on the other side of a wall— and he feels like Crawford can sense his every fidget, every drop of sweat accumulating beneath his collar, every uptick beat of his heart, surely giving him away in the cramped cabin of the car. 

Before he met Jack Crawford, the space the man occupied in Holden’s head was a dark, locked box, as untouchable as the subject was in the halls of their home. The first and only time he heard his tėtis say the name, his dad had walked out the front door and hadn’t returned for half the day, and when he had, he came back smelling like alcohol and river water, and there was dirt under his nails when he’d combed his fingers through Holden’s wild curls. Tėtis served Will’s favorite meal for dinner, and it had even tasted like an apology.

So inside that dark, locked box had been something skittering and venomous, not exactly frightening but threatening, something that could upset the peace they’d scavenged. Holden was goddamn curious, of course, but he saved his curiosity for when he was older and could dig through the archives without looking over his shoulder, and in the meantime he collected pieces of his fathers’ old lives, stitching them together and filling in the blanks between the stories they told him, enough that a hatred took root like a pit in his stomach, branching into a tree that unfurled into his bloodstream, taking up the routes of veins and arteries, and giving Holden his foundation. 

Jack Crawford is the last remaining obstacle keeping his fathers from enjoying their hard-earned freedom. And Holden is being given the honor of tearing him down. Preferably piece by piece. 

Holden smiles at him now. 

“Looked like a nice hotel,” he says.

Crawford nods. “It is.”

“Did you find a sitter for your dogs?” It sounds pathetic even to his own ears, but small talk isn’t what Will Graham would do, so it’s what Holden has to. 

“I did. Neighbor.” 

“Right, of course. Hopefully they won’t have to miss you too long.”

How should he do it? A knife, a gun, his hands? Or should Crawford be disposed of like meat that’s gone sour? Hannibal would be more than happy to lend a cleaver, Holden thinks, amused, and the corners of his lips twitch.

A quick glance assures him Crawford is oblivious, sitting as he is staring out the window at the passing scenery. It’s a Virginian spring, damp and precocious, and the buds poking through the soil are almost violently green as they shove aside the dirt and dew that has crusted over their heads. The perennials have waited patiently beneath the surface, and nothing can halt their seeking out the light. 

_God, the fucking metaphors_ , a voice that sounds like Bill’s groans in his head, and Holden can’t fight the laugh that bubbles up his throat. This time Crawford notices.

Holden forces the laugh into a cough, and takes a sip of his own coffee in a pretend to soothe the tickle. Crawford doesn’t look convinced when he dares chance a glance again. 

“Ah— I have to say, sir, it really is a privilege to be alongside you in the field, here— not that there’s any pressure, of course, I just mean— it’s a real treat to see you work, after all the stories they tell about you, the ones from, ah, before—” he rambles clumsily, hoping to look like dying roadkill Crawford’ll take pity on and put out of its misery.

“Save it, Ford,” Crawford growls, but he sounds tired. “Just— get us to Annapolis, will you?”

“Of course, sir,” Holden says. He gives it a half-beat pause before speaking again. “I do— I keep wondering about something, though, sir.”

There’s silence, but when Holden glances away from the road, Crawford is looking at him expectantly. Annoyed, but expectant. Holden continues.

“Why didn’t they kill Du Maurier? They took her leg, but left her alive. Why?”

It’s risky waters: it was Bedelia’s attack that sealed Crawford’s death warrant in the FBI. He had been given one last chance to produce evidence that either or both Will and Hannibal had survived the fall, but months passed of Crawford spending FBI resources with no new evidence to show for it. Finally, the case was quietly taken away, and Crawford was ushered out the back door. 

“Maybe she was more interesting alive than dead.”

“But you’d think Graham would’ve loved to see her dead, wouldn’t he? Interesting or not, she’s the, well— the ex-wife. They considered her important enough to be their last stop before leaving.” 

There’s a long moment before Crawford speaks again, and when he does, he sounds world-weary. “There are different kinds of deaths,” he says, “and there are different deaths befitting different people. They must have believed that it was more just for Bedelia to live knowing she had lost, than to grant her the mercy of oblivion.” 

They’re not just talking about Bedelia, anymore, but Holden doesn’t push. Neither of them say anything else for the rest of the trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i get all happy-dance-y when i think about holden's childhood lmao my !!! boy !!!!!!


	4. Chapter 4

Bedelia Du Maurier lives in a pale blue single-story house a few streets from the bay in Annapolis’ idyllic historical district, with baby’s breath in the window planters and a wrought iron gate, and that’s how Holden knows right away she’s the next in his fathers’ sounder, because there’s no way in hell they’ll let her have her desperate grab at a happy ending. Justice and mercy be damned.

As Crawford joins him alongside the sidewalk, a glance up and down the street confirms the police protective detail has already arrived, with two undercover cars stationed a few houses away under a canopy of trees. It won’t be enough for later, but Holden doesn’t comment, leading the way up the mosaic stone path to the front porch. 

There’s a wreath of tiny yellow flowers on the door that quivers when Holden knocks. St John’s wort, he recognizes. There’d been a botany field guide that Hannibal had kept with the cookbooks, which Holden used to flip through while his tėtis cooked. Hypericum was meant to ward off evil spirits. He appreciates the effort, if in vain.

The door opens without a creak on well-oiled hinges, and Holden plasters on his best do-gooder smile at its occupant, the one Bill tells him makes him look like a Mormon, but much like Will had done, Bedelia Du Maurier takes barely a glance at him before focusing on Crawford.

“Agent Crawford,” she says, voice low and vowels rounded in her wine-red mouth. “I had hoped never to see you again.” 

“Likewise,” Crawford replies. 

She flicks her gaze back to Holden, looking him up and down with a critical purse of her lips. She’s white-haired and creased by wrinkles, with a pair of thin-framed silver spectacles perched on her nose, but she’s still strikingly elegant. Her earlobes hang low with heavy pearl drops. “From the appearance of the FBI’s nannies at my door this morning, I don’t suppose I have to ask that the day we’ve dreaded has finally arrived.” She doesn’t wait for an answer before sighing and opening the door wider. “Come in.” 

A negative print of the first time he met Crawford, she’s moving off down the hall before Holden can blink, and he can see her figure contrasted against the warm lights of the house. She’s clad in a lavender silk dressing gown, embroidered with silver and violet flowers. It dusts the ground as she walks, and Holden catches a glimpse of one silk-slippered foot, and one wooden imitation, thunking softly along the hallway runner. 

He’d wondered if she would wear a prosthetic or use a wheelchair. But a wheelchair would ruin the line of the dresses, wouldn’t it? 

“Thank you for your cooperation with our investigation, ma’am,” Holden says, following into the house. He can hear Crawford trailing behind, deliberately slower as he looks around. “We hope our intrusion is unnecessary, but I’m sure you can understand the urgency.” There’s a low noise that Holden can’t quite make out coming from somewhere else in the house. It might be music playing.

Bedelia disappears around a corner, and there’s the familiar click of a stovetop being lit. Holden finds himself stepping into a kitchen and eating nook, the pale wood table set in front of an enormous bay window that overlooks a lush green garden beyond. The sky is almost garishly blue above it. It’s like a child’s drawing. 

“Doctor,” Bedelia says. She flips on the sink faucet to fill a kettle before settling it over the flame. 

“Sorry?” 

“You’ll address me as Doctor, please, not ma’am,” she says. “And what shall I call you?” She squints at him over her glasses. 

“I’m Special Agent Holden Ford, Doctor.” He knows he looks young, but he also knows how to look younger, which seems to be the angle to play with Bedelia; she’d see right through him if he tried to pretend at maturity. But he’s more concerned with her seeing through him like she did his tėtis, identifying the inherited person suit as such if he so much as fidgets wrong, so he gives a sheepish bow of his head. “I apologize.” 

She again looks past him to Crawford as he rounds the corner, then moves to pull three china cups from a nearby cabinet. “I only have tea, if that’ll do. I gave up caffeine a few years ago.”

“Give up wine, too?” Crawford asks, and her shoulders stiffen under her gown. The teacups clink together. 

When she answers, her voice is deliberately light. “It’s rather early.”

“Thought today of all days might call for an exception.”

“Today of all days,” she echoes, and Holden can finally pick up on the distant noise: it’s Shepard’s voice, on a television playing somewhere deeper in the house— probably the footage of the press conference, which should have wrapped by now and will be playing on continuous cycle on every station in the country for the rest of the week, if not the month, until Hannibal Lecter is caught and given the death penalty. 

Crawford sits down at the kitchen table uninvited, lowering himself into a chair with a soft grunt, and Holden moves to do the same, hesitating enough for Bedelia to notice. 

“Would you like any help?” Holden offers, but she shakes her head and gives a dismissive flutter of her hand in permission for him to sit as she brings over a small dish of sugar and cream. They clatter as she sets them down less than carefully. 

“That’s a lovely garden, Doctor,” Holden nods to the view out the window. “Do you keep it yourself?”

“I didn’t have much of a green thumb in my youth, but I decided to take up a hobby to aid in my recovery.” She doesn’t look at her leg, but she might as well have. 

“Tending plants can be therapeutic,” Holden agrees. 

“Do you garden, Agent Ford?”

“At my childhood home, ma’am,” Holden answers, then stammers to correct himself. “Doctor, sorry.” 

“Cut off the head of a rose and a new one will bloom in its place,” Bedelia says as if he hadn’t spoken, with a bleak uptick of the corner of her mouth. “I don’t think my psychiatrist would have approved of my coping mechanisms. Perhaps she would have suggested painting, instead.”

“Psychiatrist to the psychiatrists has a psychiatrist. Is there any end to the cycle of abuse?” Crawford mutters. It earns a baleful stare from Bedelia, so Holden clears his throat. 

“You’ve situated yourself in the art scene here in Annapolis, haven’t you?” he asks. “Do you prefer it to Baltimore?” 

“I’ve found it rather difficult to separate my name from my past, so I operate in a more remote capacity than I used to. But yes, I prefer it to Baltimore.” She’s a recluse, just like Crawford. Even in their absence, Will and Hannibal have sent everyone scurrying into their homes and drawing shut the curtains. 

The kettle shrieks on the stove. Bedelia carries it over with a towel wrapped around the handle and pours into their cups, flecks of heat splattering the tabletop. 

“Must be a relaxing change from psychiatry, though I’m sure your friends are always grateful for a word or two of your advice.”

She returns the kettle to the stove and takes a seat at the head of the table, the garden behind her a fuzzy green halo. “I closed my practice for good after I became someone’s dinner. As much as I appreciate the niceties, perhaps we can finally get to the matter at hand, Agent Ford?” 

“Of course, Doctor. Ah,” he looks to Crawford, but the man is unmoving as a statue, so Holden goes on for the both of them. “Last night, or rather, early this morning, Will Graham broke into Quantico headquarters and was detained. He was questioned, and as result of that conversation we have reason to believe Hannibal Lecter is in the country as well.” He sketches a quick outline of the conversation with Will, leaving out the more crass details. “Has either man attempted to contact you?” 

Bedelia stares down at her tea for a long moment. As with any psychic practice, there’s no concrete proof in the validity of tea divination, but she stares at her cup’s contents long enough that Holden starts to wonder if she really does see something. He looks down at his own cup, but the small green leaves clustered beneath the liquid look shapeless to him.

“No,” she says finally, her tone flat. “I have not heard from them since that final evening. Though I have seen both every day of my life, whenever I look in a mirror.” She turns cold eyes on Crawford. “I suspect I am not the only one.” 

“Do you have any information that could aid our investigation into where Lecter might be hiding?”

“Only that you won’t find him,” she murmurs as she lifts her cup to her lips. “He’ll find you.” 

Shepard’s voice on the television is a low hum in the next room, warning the public about the monster on the loose, telling them to lock their doors tight, but Holden’s already inside. 

“How about any information regarding who else they might seek out?”

“I take it the religious allusions have evaded you.” At their blank faces, Bedelia sighs again. “Hannibal and Will have returned after thirty-three years. In the Christian Bible, Christ was thirty-three years old when he was crucified.”

“That’s a heck of a coincidence.”

“Hannibal Lecter does not operate in coincidences. Certainly not when it comes to God.” She stands up with a swish of her gown and circles around her chair to the window, and the backlit sunlight plunges her form into darkness, and Holden can see it now: deemed unworthy by Hannibal and cast from heaven, she’s tried to make her own Eden, but it’s a poor imitation of the real thing, revealing more about her hurt ego than her attempt at recuperation. “Their reference to frayed ends was deliberate— they have their eyes on a son, of sorts. As it pertains to the specific situation, there are successors and usupers in abundance.”

Holden can think of four, off-hand: Walter Graham, Alana’s son, and Bill and himself. A metaphorical son, in the eyes of the FBI— following in Graham’s footsteps, as the man himself had pointed out.

The heat of attention prickles at the side of his neck, and Holden turns to find Crawford looking back at him. He’s made the same connection. 

Bedelia closes her eyes. “Three days passed before Christ ascended. You’ll have three days until Hannibal completes his sounder.” _And the son will ascend to sit at the right hand of the father._

Holden coughs lightly. “I know you must be having questions about your own safety, but I can promise you the FBI is keeping you a priority until Lecter’s apprehension—” 

“If you and your friends could not protect me then, what makes you think you can protect me now?” 

Silence. Bedelia’s hands curl into fists before her. “No one believed me,” she says with quiet fury, and when she raises her eyes, they’re daggers aimed at Crawford. “Because you failed, no one believed me.” 

Crawford’s jaw clenches, but he says nothing.

“I was muzzled just as you were. I tried to help the FBI, I tried to contact them for updates, but every time they returned my calls, it was like they were humoring a child’s belief in Santa Claus. Your failure made me a pariah in my society, so I had to find a new one, and pretend I had never known Hannibal Lecter, when I have one leg left saying I very much had.”

Crawford rises from his seat to her height like a geyser. His voice is a warning growl. “There’s a lot of blame going around today, but no one seems to be pointing the finger at themselves. Here you are, Bedelia, in a house that looks like it belongs to somebody else— your clothes, the way you style your hair. Are you preventing Hannibal Lecter from recognizing you, or yourself, so you don’t have to come face to face with the truth? The truth that we all have had a hand in how we’ve found ourselves here?” 

“I am taking responsibility for my own survival, Jack, and now I am going to do what I have been denied time and time again, which is protect myself. Hannibal Lecter is not going to get the final say on my life.” 

Holden’s eyes gravitate to the garden. _Oh, but he already has_. 

He contemplates the merits of a more homeopathic execution. Poison would be clean: another travel mug of coffee, brewed with one spoonful of sugar and a sprig of belladonna, and the deed would be done. Perhaps Bedelia would let him cut a few from her collection, to save him a trip. 

But then, Holden tuts, he wouldn’t get to see the horrified realization creep into Crawford’s eyes as he stares up at Holden, learning he’s been played.

“I think I’d like you to leave.” Bedelia says. 

Holden tries to look sorry. “We could move you to a more secure location if you’d prefer—”

“Now, please.” 

Crawford walks out without a word, but Holden rises more reluctantly. “While I understand and respect your wishes, Doctor, nevertheless we will do our best to remedy the mistakes made against you in the past.” When Bedelia doesn’t acknowledge him, he picks up his and Crawford’s cups and deposits them gently in the sink, where he catches a glimpse of a few stems of tiny mauve-petaled flowers arranged neatly on the counter beside the stove. The kettle’s lid waits, open and inviting. 

When he turns again, Bedelia is watching him, searching his face for a reaction, waiting to see if he’s recognized what they are, what she intends. Crawford is gone, so Holden sees no reason to pretend. It may be a waste of meat, but there’s a poetry he has to appreciate, and thinks Hannibal will, too.

He smiles at her. “Thank you for your time, Doctor. Enjoy your tea.” 

Her eyes follow as he goes. 

He drops off Crawford at his hotel after a deathly silent car ride back to Virginia, and is just about to pull away from the curb when the man ducks his head back in. He studies a snag in the seat upholstery as he speaks. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Holden nods. “Until tomorrow, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh bedelia :(
> 
> looks like there'll be a chapter a day till we reach the end! thank you so so much for all your support it means the galaxy <3


	5. Chapter 5

Waiting for someone to die is strange, but honestly, Holden thought it would be stranger. 

It’s evening when he finally gets home, and the silence of his apartment is almost deafening when he crosses the threshold, compared to the chaos of the day, retreating with the sun. He pauses there a moment, the door swinging shut behind him, before letting his head thunk back against the wood.

He releases a breath he’s been holding since they got to Quantico that morning. God, morning. If before it felt like days ago, now it feels like centuries. 

The ibuprofen he took earlier staved off his headache, thankfully, but he still lets himself stay unmoving, staring up at the mini mountain ranges and valleys of the popcorn ceiling. The freak-out he’d anticipated earlier doesn’t come— instead, he feels bizarrely calm. Maybe his internal coping mechanisms saw the shit show of emotions hurtling towards him and elected to slam the _detachment_ button. He feels like his strings have been cut. 

From the doorway, he finally gets to see his apartment clearly, having tornadoed through it in his earlier haste. He’s been gone longer than normal, and there’s a thin layer of dust that coats over every surface, but even without it, the place would still scream of lifelessness. The whole flat is sparse, with its functional furniture and minimal decor. As Bill would say, “void of personality,” or if there is any, it’s distinctly manufactured. He looks at it with new eyes now— it’s such a contrast to the rooms he grew up in. He took such a hard veer towards normalcy he missed it by a mile. He wonders if you could describe a room as _anxious_.

He’s pretending at being something he isn’t, just like Bedelia. 

But what is he, if not this? He wonders if it’s more apt to call the thrum under his skin _anger_ , or if not, if he _should_ be angry. After all, he didn’t join the FBI with the intention of seeking vengeance for his fathers, hadn’t even thought about Crawford’s measly excuse of an existence since his university years. He came here to learn, to study his fathers and their legacies, to better understand his place in this world. But he’s no closer to an answer. 

He thinks to something Bill once told him, another tiny podunk town in their rearview mirror, one that would be rocked for years to come from the carnage they had witnessed, but for him and Bill, it had been just another day. 

He’d said as much to Bill, and Bill had just shook his head. 

“It takes a certain kind of person to do this job. Sometimes I think the psychos have the easy part— all they have to do is listen to the fucked-up little voices in their heads. We’re the guys who don’t ever get to give into our urges. We have to be the upright moral citizens of the world. We decide what separates right from wrong, us from them, and we have to protect that, for those who can’t protect themselves.” 

But Holden wasn’t chasing _morality_. The barrier between _him_ and _them_ was as flimsy as a two-way mirror. And he wasn’t even sure which _them_ he was referring to.

His briefcase falls to the floor with a thunk, his suit jacket landing unceremoniously on top of it, and he unknots his tie as he wanders into the kitchen. He has the whole night ahead of him, since Bedelia’s body won’t be discovered until morning, so he looks around his kitchen and wonders what to do. Thinking of Bedelia’s lethal cup of tea, he switches on the coffee maker again.

If it were the life of someone he cared about at risk, he imagines these hours would be fretful and frenetic, and he’d be pacing a trench into the carpet waiting for news, but he isn’t. Maybe the thrum is curiosity. Eagerness. Somewhere in Annapolis, Bedelia Du Maurier is living out her final hours, and Hannibal is watching from an unknown location, until he can swoop in to craft whatever tableau he has planned. Holden has an inkling of what it will be already. Not for the first time, he wishes he was there with him.

And then, with a surprised laugh that echoes in the emptiness of his apartment, he realizes why this feeling is so familiar: it’s not unlike waiting for dinner. 

The kitchen was Hannibal’s territory, for the most part. He’d occasionally call on Will to lend a hand, but Will’s usual post was leaning against an out-of-the-way counter and watching. When Holden was a baby, then a toddler bumbling through the house, Will used to hold him and together they’d watch Hannibal prep and stir and plate their meals, until Holden grew taller and heavier and squirmier and escaped to run through the vineyards with the dogs at his heels, only returning when he heard his dad calling his name from the back porch.

The day after Holden learned the truth, he didn’t go outside with the dogs. Instead he found himself in the doorway of the kitchen, silent as a grave as he watched Hannibal at the island, elbow-deep in dough, flour dancing a dust ballet in the light streaming through the windows. 

Will wasn’t there yet, still up in the study. It was just him and Tėtis. Hannibal paused ever so briefly, enough that Holden knew his tėtis knew he was there, but he didn’t turn around. He only took a large wooden spoon from the utensil holder and set it on the counter, next to a waiting bowl, ingredients piled high within. 

“Come,” Hannibal said, not an order but not not an order, and Holden went, tugged forward by the invisible thread of curiosity. At Hannibal’s side, his tėtis offered him a wink, and Holden’s shoulders untensed. “No child of mine will be a novice in the kitchen.”

Holden hasn’t had many opportunities to show off, but he is, in fact, a good cook. The irregular hours of the FBI have forced him to become a connoisseur of instant noodles and instant coffee, but give him a well-stocked pantry and an open evening and he can hold his own against even Hannibal. What he would give for a home-cooked meal, he sighs, as the burbling coffee maker quiets and he pours himself a mug. Then again, he might not have to wait long.

He’s the butcher for their upcoming feast. The question arises again of just how to do it. 

He looks down at his hands, wrapped as they are around his mug. He tightens his hold almost imperceptibly, just to feel the lack of yield from the ceramic. Hands wrapped around a human throat would feel different. He could squeeze the mug tighter, and it might eventually shatter, but a human wouldn’t shatter. 

Or maybe they would. Would he be able to feel the tendons snap beneath his palms, the voice box crumple like a soda can? He can picture the cracks winding their way up Crawford’s jaw, his jowls, up to his eyes where the blood vessels pop and ooze like cherry syrup, flowing over—

A sharp stab of heat and pain flares up Holden’s fingers, and he startles from his vision to find he’s broken the mug, hot coffee spilling everywhere and scalding his palms. He curses and hurries to the sink, throwing the faucet to let cold water gush over his hand to soothe the burn. He’s bleeding, he discovers, the force of the water making pale slivers of sliced skin pulse, watery blood sluicing over his thumb joint and down his wrist. 

He stares, mesmerized. He hadn’t considered drowning Crawford. But no, water was more Will’s calling card. Plus the bloating would be messy. 

Once the red runs clear, Holden grabs the first aid kit from the bathroom and digs out a strip of gauze, wrapping it around his palm a few times and tying it off with a neat bow before heading back to the kitchen to mop up the coffee. He brushes the shards of his mug into the trash bin, watching them glitter as they fall.

Maybe he’ll take the caffeine’s death as a sign he should turn in for bed. After all, there won’t be much time for sleep in the next few days, and ascension is tiring work. 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a super long action-packed chapter to make up for yesterday's lil introspective moodiness! tw for references to disordered eating and drugging (but i also know nothing about drugs so ! suspend ur disbelief a lil more ahah)

He wakes when the phone rings, but this time Holden knows what the call is going to say. 

It’s a reasonable hour of the morning, this time, because it would have been rude for the morning patrol to encroach on Bedelia’s privacy too early, but it’s still early enough that Bill yawns a hello when he pulls up out front of Holden’s apartment. Will steps out into an overcast world, the sunshine of yesterday swallowed up by heavy grey clouds, foretelling rain. 

“What happened to your hand?” Bill asks as Holden buckles in. 

“Accident in the kitchen last night, it’s fine,” Holden dismisses quickly, then fills Bill in on yesterday’s conversation with Bedelia.

When they get to Annapolis, Bedelia’s street is already in pandemonium, officer car lights splashing red and blue across the clapboard houses, dogs yapping their heads off, neighbors gathering on their front lawns in their bathrobes. The front door of the cottage is cordoned off with bright yellow police tape that matches the St John’s Wort wreath. Bill and Holden break free of the sea of blue and duck under to find Crawford and Wendy waiting for them on the other side. 

It’s a little jarring to see Wendy in this setting, but from how close she's standing to Crawford Holden guesses her presence is under the guise of moral support, though he won’t be too quick to dismiss the idea that Wendy’s personal curiosity was not an insignificant factor.

“Where is she?” Bill asks after they say hello. Crawford points down the hall, that only yesterday he and Holden had followed Bedelia down. 

The inside of the house is just as bustling as the outside, forensic techs in their crinkly white suits taking photographs and combing through shelves and drawers and couch cushions, leaving no stone unturned, the flashes of photographs being taken snaking across the walls like lightning, bringing the spring storm inside.

Even with the carpet runner underfoot, their steps are loud on the hardwood, but Holden’s heart thuds even louder in his ears. He’s never seen one of his father’s displays in person. 

“Patrol didn’t see anything?” Bill asks Crawford. The man shakes his head. 

“Not even a rustling leaf,” he answers, but he doesn’t sound too surprised. Holden wonders how Hannibal got past the protective detail. Or maybe he was already in the house when Holden and Crawford came calling. Lurking in the shadows between the lace curtains and overstuffed furniture. 

They step into the kitchen, and Holden’s heart leaps into his throat. 

The pale wood table he had sat at has now been draped with a maroon tablecloth with lace edges, and a crystal vase of vivid orange lilies has been set as the centerpiece, framed by two flickering, tall-stemmed candles. All four chairs have a complete formal place setting of gold-rimmed plates and gleaming silverware and wine and water glasses. Alas, it’s a dreary dinner party: only one seat is filled, and there’s no food in sight. 

Bedelia is propped in the chair facing the garden, her eyes opened to half-mast, revealing lightless pupils. She’s dressed in a dark red evening gown, and Holden crouches to glimpse her leg under the table. There’s a slit in her dress cut all the way up to her hip, revealing creamy skin and her amputated thigh, absent prosthetic, only the healing skin of the stump has been sliced away to give the illusion of a fresh wound. A small pool of blood has collected on the hardwood around her remaining bare foot.

He straightens to survey the tabletop. Her wine glass is the only one partially filled, deep purple liquid matching the rest of the aesthetic. Bedelia’s hands are clasped together on the plate before her, with a small bouquet of purple flowers blooming from her loose fist. “Belladonna,” he identifies out loud.

A forensics tech armed with a clipboard had appeared at their side as they entered, and he nods to Holden in confirmation. “Preliminary cause of death is poison. Toxicity levels of the wine and the inside of her mouth tested off the charts. We found a clipped belladonna bush in the yard, so we know where it came from.”

“Did Lecter administer it?” Wendy asks.

“The muscle of the thigh is relaxed and there’s minimal blood loss, meaning the victim was deceased for a while before the cut was made,” the tech says. “I’d hazard she died four, maybe four and half hours before Lecter came through.”

“A suicide,” Bill whistles. “She wasn’t taking any risks.” 

“I’m guessing Lecter didn’t take any organs then. No use for poisoned meat,” Crawford observes.

Bedelia’s nails have white painted tips, which Holden hadn’t noticed yesterday, masking nail beds that are cracked and brittle. Her fingers are thin and bony, and Holden starts to think of other ways Bedelia had tried to thwart Lecter’s revenge plot, not just the night before but in all the years since he took her leg: make herself frail, starve the meat off her bones, live off tea and wine and tea and wine. She wouldn’t taste very good, regardless of the belladonna clogging her veins. 

Still, he can envision it: Hannibal would take the head of the table, just as he did the first time this night played out, rather than the middle— to show Will he wasn’t torn between his two lovers. Will would take the middle seat, as well as the knife from Bedelia’s silverware set in precaution, though it would be useless to her in her present state. And then Holden would sit across from Will, just like their table at home, and they’d look up and smile as Tėtis brought in the main dish. If Holden closes his eyes, he can almost hear someone clattering in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, butter sizzling in a pan. He can practically smell it. His mouth waters.

“Did you know it only takes the same amount of force to bite through your own finger as it does to bite through a carrot? But we don’t, because the self-preservation signals in our brains start screaming at us not to,” Holden says absently. Without the flush of blood under her skin or the sharpness of her eyes, Bedelia almost looks like a skeleton, all dressed up.

There’s silence in the room. Holden looks up to see everyone staring at him.

“The fuck, Holden?” Bill asks.

 _Shit._ Holden scrambles. _Don’t be creepy, don’t be creepy._ “No, I’m just saying— her hands are set on the plate, rather than just next to it. She’s her own meal, even without the belladonna. Tėt— _Lecter_ was punishing her for trying to evade him.” What he says must be discomfiting enough that no one seems to have noticed his verbal stumble. Not that anyone would know the Lithuanian regardless. 

“She didn’t want Lecter to get the last laugh, but he did anyway.” Crawford nods at Holden. “You said you gardened, Ford. What do orange lilies symbolize?”

Holden ignores the face Bill pulls at the mention of gardening in favor of brushing a finger against a drooping petal. The spray of flowers is so vibrantly orange they almost look like they’re on fire. “White lilies are commonly used for funerals to signify mourning, but orange lilies actually mean hatred. There’s no mistake of any love lost here.” 

“No attempt at respect, either. He’s recreated the scene from their last meeting almost in a spitting image, but he didn’t bandage the thigh wound like before. And there are four place settings now, instead of three.”

Bill exhales. “The so-called son.” 

“Second in the sounder, on the second day,” Crawford muses. “His last strike will be tomorrow.” He spins on his heel to address Wendy. “Tell Shepard to double security for both Walter Graham and the Verger boy. And get a detail for Ford and Tench, too.” 

Bill exchanges a wide-eyed look with Holden. “I appreciate that, sir, but I don’t think that’s really necessary—” 

“No argument, Agent Tench. We’re not taking any risks.” 

Panic starts to slither up Holden’s spine. Four seats at the table means everyone has to be in attendance for dinner, and Holden can’t get Will out of Quantico if he has a tail following his every move, so he’s going to have to find a different way, and fast. 

“And I want to talk to Graham,” Crawford says.

Startled, Wendy jumps in. “Is that a good idea, sir? I mean—”

“Last time, I can admit, I wasn’t ready. But this,” —Crawford gestures to the table— “isn’t going to wait until I’m ready.”

Wendy opens her mouth in protest, but knows she’s up against a brick wall. Her shoulders slump. “Alright. We’ll head back, and you and I can—”

“I want to go with Ford.”

Holden freezes. So does everyone else. 

Crawford wants _Holden_ to visit Will with him? _Why?_ Holden is supposed to be leading Crawford _away_ from Will and their connection, not closing the distance. _Shit. Shit shit shit._

Crawford is clearly waiting for him to say something, so Holden forces his tongue to move, and there’s really only one answer he can give. “Of course, sir. I’d be happy to.”

He earns himself a nod. “We’ll need the photographs of this scene developed. And I don’t want the interview recorded.” _Interesting_. Whatever Crawford plans on saying, he doesn’t want on record.

Wendy’s brow furrows. “Respectfully, sir, I’m going to have to insist on a recording,” she says, but an idea is slowly taking shape in Holden’s mind. 

“That might be a good idea, actually. The idea is recreation, isn’t it? Hannibal’s made his move, recreating the night of their escape. Now the ball’s in our court. Let’s see what they do when we rewind the clock too,” he suggests, and the look Wendy gives him for stepping on her metaphorical toes is almost murderous, but Crawford looks pleased.

“It’s settled, then. We’ll reconvene at Quantico. We know Lecter won’t strike again until tomorrow, but I want _us_ to be one step ahead of him this time.” 

With one last, disdainful look at Bedelia, Crawford turns to go and the others follow like he’s a magnet, but Holden lingers at Bedelia’s side. The silver of her cutlery glints in the candlelight. Holden slides closer, pretending to inspect the flowers more closely, but subtly grabs the knife from its set and slips it up his sleeve before anyone can see.

Crawford’s only half right— history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.

Holden asks Bill to drop him at his place so he can take his own car, in case Shepard splits them all up after he and Crawford visit with Will. Really he just wants to dash upstairs to grab his pocket knife from its place in his bedside table. It’s an antique, apparently once owned by a famous Danish count, whose great-grandson had mysteriously gone missing on vacation in Florence. Holden’s fathers gave it to him on his thirteenth birthday. He’d rarely had occasion to use it besides for whittling or cutting fishing line, and rarer still after coming to America, but he still oils and sharpens it every other month to make sure it doesn’t lose its luster or its bite to the rust of time. 

He’ll get a lecture from Hannibal when his tėtis discovers what he intends to do with it, but there’s no real sentimental value in comparison. He also grabs a plastic baggie from his kitchen on his way out the door, sealing Bedelia’s knife inside. He’s collecting little puzzle pieces, waiting to be snapped together. 

Quantico is in full swing when he arrives. Phones are ringing off the hook with the new tip line number available to the public, and agents and interns are caffeine-fueled torpedos seeking heat through the halls. 

Holden finds their little group outside Shepard’s office. Bill’s got his nose in Will’s file again, and Crawford and Wendy are conversing quietly a few paces away.

“I’m going to run to the restroom,” Holden tells Bill, just loud enough to be heard by the others.

BIll gives him a look. “Do you want my permission? This isn’t kindergarten, Holden. Piss if you gotta piss.”

Holden manages a smile. “Right. Yeah. Ok, I’ll— I’ll be right back.” 

He heads off in the direction of the bathrooms, but once he rounds the corner, he keeps going until he reaches Evidence. The pudgy woman at the desk, Glinda, scowls at him over her glasses as he enters, until he fishes Bedelia’s knife in its baggie from his coat pocket. 

“This was from the, ah, Du Maurier site. I’m supposed to see if the match is in archives?” he can’t help but pose it as a question. Glinda’s always been intimidating. She kind of looks like if you stuck a wig and glasses on a banana slug. A banana slug that could swallow you whole. 

She looks at him critically for an agonizing second, before jerking her head towards the stacks of file boxes behind her. “Everything we’ve got on Lecter has been pulled up from archives already. Fifth aisle.”

“Which shelf?”

“Not a shelf. The whole row.”

He thanks her and half-jogs over, disappearing into shadows of the tall shelves. He’d kill to comb through the boxes they’ve amassed, but he bypasses them for the back wall, where he knows there’s a drug stash that’s been there for years, suspended in limbo while a dealer’s court appeal waits to get processed. It hasn’t been processed, Holden knows, because the FBI’s staff samples from this particular stash every now and then, and they don’t want to lose their free supply. Holden’s never partaken, but it’s the one piece of evidence in here that hasn’t had every pill counted.

There’s weed, cocaine, ecstasy, molly, even a small blue bundle of meth crystals, but Holden goes straight for the bag at the back of the box, where the Rohypnol is. 

He has no idea how strong they are, since the guy they grabbed them off wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and his kingpin probably cut every batch in half with chalk or flour, or if maybe the pills lose their potency after x many years, so he grabs a small handful just in case and stuffs it in his inside jacket pocket, along with Bedelia’s knife. 

Holden has never seen the appeal in drugs, or anything that dulls the mind. He doesn’t even really handle his liquor all that well. He might have a problem, however, when the adrenaline is this addicting. 

“No luck,” he tells Glinda as he scurries past, just in case she’s actually a banana slug/drug sniffing dog cross breed, but she barely looks up. “Thank you, ma’am.” He makes it back to Shepard’s just in time to see the man shoo a sobbing intern out of his office.

“Get lost?” Bill intones, but before Holden can reply Shepard spots him, and the man’s face goes purple. 

“Ford. In here. Now.” He shoots a look at Bill when he tries to follow. “Alone.” 

Holden obeys dutifully, ducking past their little group. He closes the door behind him, though he knows it’ll be futile against Shepard’s rampage. 

Shepard all but collapses into his desk chair. “The only reason,” Shepard hisses, jabbing a finger at Holden, “that I am letting you two down there without a tape or a _fucking guard_ is because _Hannibal Lecter_ slipped under our fucking nose _again_ ,” —he drops his voice at the word, casting a bitter glance at the closed door and its audience behind it— “and quite frankly I’m ready to drag Will Graham through the streets by his thumbs if it’ll get Lecter out in the open.” 

Holden knows he’s not expected to reply, so he just nods. 

“But _you_ are going to march your ass back up here the second you’re done and you’re going to give me a _verbatim_ reenactment, like it’s a goddamn Broadway play. Understood?”

Holden nods again. His neck twinges painfully. Half his job is being a bobble head, he swears. “Yes, sir.” 

“Good. Here are your fucking photographs,” he tosses a manila folder towards Holden across the desk, probably the unfortunate intern’s ill-timed delivery. It bulges slightly with the small size of the photographs, which is all the more convenient for Holden’s plan, which at this step is playing out almost too perfectly. Maybe he really does have fate on his side. “Now go.” 

Wendy and Bill have disappeared when he emerges, but Crawford is waiting with his arms crossed, face impassive. Holden forces a smile that isn’t returned. Here comes the biggest hurdle yet.

“Lead the way,” Crawford says. 

The bureau’s temporary holding cells are located in the basement, in the wing opposite the BSU. Where the BSU’s quote-unquote offices are mildewy and dim and more aptly called a storage room, the holding cells are practically medieval by comparison. To be fair, they haven’t been renovated since the building was first designed, because their occupants never stay for long— the only prisoners they see are big name perps on their way to life in a small padded room. Overnight guests at best. 

Security has been vamped, though, since their perp has a bigger name than usual. There are two guards outside the mouth of the stairwell, and two more just inside, armed with guns much larger than Holden’s. They don’t look at him or Crawford as they slip past through the doors. 

The sounds of Quantico vanish completely as the heavy metal swings shut. They exchange glances, before beginning to wind their way down two flights of concrete steps, the air pressing hot and damp and close until they reach the bottom where the weapons cage waits. Holden memorizes the route on instinct, just as he knows Will must have done.

Even though there’s a strip of yellow tape along the ground before the cells that they are forbidden to even put a toe over, the FBI isn’t going to risk a long-armed criminal pickpocketing a weapon, so they have to hand over their guns. Even the keys to the cells are looped to a massive, clanging key ring, typically code-locked through a guard’s belt loop. 

Except, that is, the single skeleton key that Ronnie the cage-manager keeps in his front breast pocket. 

Ronnie’s been here for longer than Bill, Holden, and possibly Shepard combined. He’s a short man, pale from working so many years hidden from the sun, and so skinny a stiff wind could probably knock him over. He’s also an alcoholic. When Holden comes down to this part of the basement, which is seldom but enough to suss out a pattern, he’s caught whiff of Ronnie’s “coffee” on the desk, and glimpsed the rim of a glossy bottle of whiskey tucked beneath his chair. 

Ronnie’s kept his job this long for two reasons: one, he’s a high-functioning drunk, and two, he’s disabled the cage’s cameras, so no one can see him give his coffee a little extra splash. He gets away with it because no one really cares— with what few guests they’ve had, no one’s ever slipped under his (unfortunately large) nose before. 

But then, no one’s had a friend on the inside before, either.

Ronnie has his feet kicked up on the desk when they round the corner of the stairwell. He scrambles to swing them down as they approach, narrowly missing taking out his cup, so he pushes it into safer territory closer to the window of the metal cage. Even better. 

“Afternoon, fellas,” Ronnie rumbles, and Holden beams at him, tucking the file under his arm and using the diversion of his greeting to dip a quick hand into his inner jacket pocket and pull out a fistful of chalky pills. Crawford grunts behind him. 

“Good afternoon, Ronnie. We’re here to see our guest.” Holden unclasps his belt holster, then reaches back an open hand to Crawford. “I can take yours, too, sir.” 

Crawford grunts again, but hands over his gun wordlessly, and Holden passes them both through the gap in the cage. As he does, his wrist hovers just over the coffee cup, and as Ronnie takes the guns away to set on a shelf off to the side, Holden drops the handful into the waiting liquid. He coughs loudly into his shoulder to mask the noise of the fizz as the pills dissolve.

“Oof, sorry about that,” he gives Ronnie another grin as the man passes Holden a clipboard and pen to sign in the weapons. “Think I might be catching something.” Holden scribbles his signature and hands back the clipboard, then tugs at his collar with his now-empty hand. The gesture works like a yawn or an itch— if you see someone do it, you feel you have to, too, and sure enough, Ronnie takes a big swig of his drink, and the dissolved pills, to soothe his imaginary throat tingle.

Holden has to hand it to him— there’s gotta be enough alcohol in there to singe Ronnie’s mustache right off his face, but the man doesn’t even twitch.

“Yeah, well. Wash your hands,” Ronnie mutters, ever the conversationalist, and Holden gives a mini two-fingered salute while trying to subtly dust off the fingers of his other hand on his pant leg. 

Crawford looks unamused when Holden turns back around, his own hands in his pockets. He tilts his head in the direction of the cells.

“Shall we?”

A long, dark hallway extends in front of them, like a horizontal abyss. The cells are positioned along one side of the hall, so they can’t look into each other through their iron bar frames, though there’s only one cell with a light on at the moment, near the far end.

They only advance a few yards towards that light before Holden stops.

“Ah, shit, I forgot to give him this,” he says, pulling his pocket knife out of his jacket, holding it up for Crawford to see. “I’m so sorry, sir, I really should run this back. Ronnie’s a stickler for protocol, and we don’t want to risk anything, right?”

Crawford looks like he wants to strangle him— _the feeling is mutual, sir_ — but he motions for Holden to be quick, and Holden gives him an apologetic cringe. “I’ll be right back, I promise,” he says, and takes off for the cage. When he gets there, Ronnie’s leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head, feet up on the desk again, but he’s passed out cold. Maybe Holden overdid it a bit with the dose, but the man won’t die— he doesn’t think. 

With a darted glance over his shoulder to confirm Crawford’s still facing the light, Holden leans forward into the cage and palms the skeleton key from Ronnie’s breast pocket, getting a puff of putrid whiskey-stinking breath in the face for his troubles. Then he fans out his pocket knife and snaps one thin knife blade off, and he slides both items into the folder, tucked safe between the photographs. He tosses the pocket knife onto the pile of their guns, before taking off towards Crawford again. His heart is racing. His plan is _actually fucking working_. 

“Ready now?” Crawford asks drily. They keep walking. 

Holden counts to five before speaking again. “Would you mind holding this for a moment, sir? It’s boiling down here. Are you boiling?” He hands over the file, and Crawford takes it with a roll of his eyes while Holden shrugs out of his jacket. He drapes it over his arm, but doesn’t ask for the file back. 

“They keep it hot because it keeps the inmates docile,” Crawford tells him. Holden’s been to enough prisons to know this, but he doesn’t say so. 

“I don’t think anyone would describe Will Graham as _docile_ ,” he retorts instead.

Crawford puffs out a short breath of air. “Just. Let me do the talking, Ford, yeah?” Holden nods, just in time for them to step up in front of Will Graham’s cell. 

The man in question is laid out on the cot shoved up against the concrete block wall. It’s a barren little space, equipped with a toilet, sink, and the cot, which has a poor excuse for a mattress and a slip of fabric for a pillow. Will looks like he’s sleeping, with his hands folded neatly over his stomach, but he lifts his head when he hears them. He pushes himself up to stand with a grin.

“Jack, and Agent Ford,” he says, stretching his arms above his head in the picture of ease. He’s been given a pristine white jumpsuit to change into, which only makes him look more tan, like he’s been on holiday, though his hair is unbrushed and unruly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We found Bedelia,” Crawford replies. “Not a very nice thing you did to her.” 

“A dignified death is an oxymoron.” Will drops his arms and steps closer to the bars. He looks to Holden, scanning him over. “No cassette this time?” he asks, like Holden’s little more than a secretary. “Not very above-board of you. Do we have things to say you don’t want leaving a trail?”

“It’s not a show anymore, Will,” Crawford answers. “No audience, no script. Just us. And a long overdue conversation.” He shuffles the file between his hands, making Holden’s heart leap into his throat, but mercifully, he doesn’t open it. 

Will smirks again, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Oh? What’s on your mind, Jack? What’s keeping you up at night?”

“You. Again.”

Will spreads his hands wide, encompassing his weapon-less person and the bleak cell around him. “I’m in here, Jack. Helpless. It’s Hannibal that’s roaming wild.”

“I’m not responsible for Hannibal.” The _But I am for you_ is left unsaid. “Nevertheless, I thought you might like to see how it turned out.” He extends the file towards the bars, careful not to step over the tape line, and an arm reaches to accept it and pull it back into its depths. 

“We used to call this ‘ _borrowing my imagination_ ,’” Will says to Holden in a stage-whisper. “But whose fault is it when someone borrows something and returns it broken? The person who broke it, or the person who agreed to lend it out?” 

He winks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer before giving them his back, opening the folder away from them so they can’t see his face. But Holden watches for the slightest shift of Will’s shoulder beneath his jumpsuit as he slips the key and blade up into his sleeve. 

There’s a long stretch of quiet as Will flips through the photographs. Then he tilts his face up to the ceiling and inhales and exhales deeply, the slope of his shoulders loosening, and it’s fascinating, even if Holden’s seen it a million times, to watch his dad disappear across space and time without moving a muscle. 

Holden peers at Crawford from the corner of his eye. Will’s back to him, he doesn’t have any reason to hide his true feelings from painting themselves across his face, open and naked and exposed, but still his mouth is fixed in an impassive grim line, his brow furrowed as he watches Will. 

A small eternity passes before Will sucks in an inhale and his whole body seizes back to life.

There’s the rustle of papers as he closes the file, and Holden shifts his jacket to his other arm and steps forward as Will does to take back the file before Crawford can move for it. The new absence of the contraband’s weight is imperceptible, but Holden isn’t going to take any chances. 

“I didn’t really need to do that,” Will says to Holden as he surrenders the paper. “I just wanted to revel.” As Will turns to Crawford and Holden retreats to the man’s side, Holden can’t quite fight the slight curl of his mouth. “You said you had questions?”

Crawford doesn’t acknowledge the snark. “The fourth chair, Will. Who is it for?” 

“How do you know it isn’t for you?”

“Thirty-three years, three sounders in three days. Bedelia was kind enough to point out the Biblical references— it’s the Easter story, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t cast me as Jesus. Agent Ford asked if you consider yourself a hero or a villain, but the real question is, do you consider yourself God?”

“Someone didn’t skip Sunday school,” Will commends. “I have… worshipped at Hannibal’s altar, as he has worshipped at mine.”

Crawford’s eyes darken, as Holden suppresses a cringe. No one wants to hear about their parents’ sex lives. “And who is the sacrifice for your sins? Is it Walter Graham?”

The smile vanishes. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sing for your supper, Jack.”

“Is it Agent Tench? Agent Ford?” Maybe that’s why Crawford brought him here. Dangle the bait in front of the shark, see if he’ll bite, reveal the vulnerability of his hunger.

Will doesn’t even look at Holden. He keeps his glare locked with Crawford’s. “Careful, or you’ll start giving me ideas,” he warns, his teasing tone sharpened with a steel edge.

“Too bad it couldn’t be for Abigail, but I guess we have Hannibal to thank for that.”

Will surges towards the bars, and Holden flinches back, startled, though Crawford doesn’t move an inch. “You don’t get to say that name,” Will hisses through the iron.

“You’re not in a position to be telling me what I can and cannot do.”

They stare each other down, and Holden’s blood is ringing in his ears. It would be so easy to step three feet over and snap Jack’s neck. End it all here, in this second. He’s almost tempted. 

The expression on Will’s face as he pushes back from the bars shows he has the same thought, but he knows he can’t reach. Instead he prowls the length of the cage like a tiger. “Funny, how many contenders there are. Pretenders to the throne. False prophets singing the hollow hymns of false gods.”

“You sound like Hannibal,” Crawford says. Will rolls his eyes. “Maybe you’ve been spending too much time together.”

Will shakes his head with a wry smile. “When my brain was on fire sometimes I didn’t know where I ended and Hannibal began. There’s a Greek myth that humans were born with four arms and four legs and two faces. But Zeus split them in half, and banished each half to opposite sides of the Earth so that they would be doomed to spend the rest of their lives trying to find the other. To be whole. The Greeks called them _soulmates_.” He inspects the walls of his cell, taking stock of the divets in the cement, the water stains. “Maybe that’s where I was going when I sleep-walked. My soul knew before I did— I was just trying to get to Hannibal.”

“You believe Hannibal is your _soulmate_?” Crawford’s voice drips with incredulity.

“I believe we were destined to find each other. To create something together that is more whole than we were apart.”

In his chest, Holden’s heart swells with fondness. 

Will pauses in his pacing and tilts his head, reminiscent of a bird. “Bedelia said something surprisingly wise, once. _‘We find our endings in our beginnings.’_ It implies our lives flow in a circle beyond our control, generating its own feedback loop, or maybe an ouroboros, with our heads eating our tails.”

“Is this your ending?”

“I knew from the start, that if we ever wanted peace, there had to be blood, because it began with blood.”

“Hasn’t there been enough blood, Will?”

Will just shakes his head again. “Not yet, Jack. Not yet.” He closes his eyes for a long moment. “Let’s say, for the sake of the plot, that we’ve cast everyone into a corresponding role of this passion play. You think Hannibal and I are God. Who else?”

“Bedelia was Judas,” Holden speaks up, and Will snaps his fingers. 

“The false disciple, very good. Who else? Who is Walter? Who is Alana? Who are you, Agent Ford?” 

“Who am I?” Crawford asks, to tear Will’s eyes from Holden.

“You already know the answer to that, Jack, you just don’t want to admit it.” 

“Enough games, Will—”

But Will interrupts him, throwing his head back and laughing, loud and harsh, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the fringe of his beard. “Don’t you get it yet, Jack? I’m not playing _your_ game anymore. You’re playing mine.” He closes in against the bars again, wrapping his fingers around the iron, almost pressing his face through the slim gap. “You’ve come for the next clue but you already have it. So what’s the real reason you’re here?”

“To grieve,” Crawford replies simply. “After this I’ll never see you again.”

He’s wrong, but Will can’t say so or they’ll triple his security and it’ll be nigh impossible for him to escape, so Holden watches his dad curl his mouth into a crude imitation of a smile, and leans into a mocking bow.

Jack leaves before he lifts his head. Holden follows. 

Will’s shout chases after them down the hall.

“To the Devil his due!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ten points to whoever can spot all the sneaky allusions


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the d r a m a

They make it to the mouth of the hallway before Holden risks looking at Crawford. He expects to see the man looking annoyed or disgruntled, but when he glances over, the man looks a little… _grey_ at the edges. Holden’s eyebrows jump in surprise. “Agent Crawford? Are you alright?” 

Like the words are a blow, Crawford stumbles, one hand floundering for the wall at his left, the other flying up to grab at his chest. “Agent Crawford!” Holden exclaims. He grabs for the man so he doesn’t collapse, managing to guide his descent to the floor. Is he having a heart attack? Is he going to die, here in the basement, before Holden gets to kill him?

After making sure the man isn’t about to slide prone to the floor, Holden looks around frantically, but of course the hallway is empty, and Ronnie’s gonna be out for the rest of this shift and the next. “Should I get help? I’m going for help—” Holden springs to his feet, but a hand grips his forearm like a vice and tugs him back down.

“I’m fine,” Crawford wheezes. “Just need... to catch... my breath.” 

He’s shaking, Holden realizes: a full-body shiver like he’s suddenly leaped into an ice-cold pool. 

“Sir, I have to—”

“Ford,” he gasps, but his grip doesn’t slacken. “No.”

Whatever the reason— embarrassment, maybe?— Holden’s not going to be able to leave, so he shifts his crouch so he won’t topple over, before placing his hand atop Crawford’s where it’s clenched onto his sleeve.

“Alright, okay, I won’t go. Just— focus on my voice. We’ll breathe together, okay? In,” Holden sucks in a dramatic breath, holds it for three seconds, then lets it out in a rush. Crawford just stares at him at first, but when Holden’s on his third breath cycle, the man starts to make an effort to join in.

They breathe like that for a while, Holden gradually slowing each breath, holding them for longer counts until Crawford‘s wheezes turn into shuddery exhales, and then Holden starts to talk. He’s never tried to talk someone out of a panic attack before; he’s never needed to. But he thinks it might be a little like hostage negotiation. Keep them calm, tell them what they need to hear. 

But instead of his last hostage situation, Holden finds himself thinking of his fathers, in small lightning flashes of memories: Hannibal gently smoothing a band-aid over Holden’s skinned knee; Will helping him trap a spider between a cup and a piece of paper to let it free outside; Hannibal teaching him how to dice an onion correctly, blade flat against his knuckles; Will showing him how to hook a worm and keep his fingers out of the way. 

So instead, Holden calls on the steady voice of his fathers, and tells Crawford what they would say if it were him whose world was crumbling. 

“It’s okay, sir. It’s all okay. It all feels a bit out of sorts at the moment, yeah? But it’ll right itself. The world will right itself, it always does.” He squeezes Crawford’s hand. “You’re not alone. Bill and Wendy and I are right beside you, we’re safe, and no one’s gonna touch us.” An inhale, an exhale, then— “He’s just a man. He’s just a man in a cage.” 

It takes a while, but eventually Crawford’s breathing levels, and they both sit there listening to the quiet rumbles of the building around them. 

“Thank you, Ford,” Crawford says softly, so softly Holden almost doesn’t catch it.

He gives his best reassuring smile— not the creepy Mormon one, but a real one. And Crawford returns it with a wobbly one of his own.

Holden doesn’t press him about what happened. Instead he squeezes Crawford‘s hand again. “You ready to get up, sir?” he asks. “A glass of water sounds real nice right about now.”

Crawford nods. “Yes it does.”

Together, they heft to their feet, Holden winding an arm around Crawford’s back to keep him from falling again, and then Holden leads them past the slumbering Ronnie, angling his body so Crawford doesn’t notice, and they start their slow trek up the stairs. 

It’s like emerging from a coffin, to step into the light and chaos of the main level from the hushed isolation of the basement. Holden leads them back to Shepard’s vacant office, where the secretary rushes off to get them some water as Holden settles Crawford on the couch inside. 

“I’ll be right back,” Holden tells him. “I’m just gonna grab our things from the cage.” 

He practically flies back down to the cells. He grabs their guns and his pocket knife, before patting Ronnie briefly on the chest. “Sorry, Ronnie,” he whispers. 

When he gets back up to Shepard’s office, Wendy, Bill, and Shepard have all appeared, forming a little crescent moon around Crawford. 

“Agent Crawford was just telling us about your little visit,” Shepard says, and dread slinks down Holden’s spine. But no, he wasn’t seen, and he doubts Crawford would tell them about his episode. “What did you think, Ford?” There’s no mention of Broadway, luckily, though it’s probably for Crawford’s sake and not Ford’s.

Holden hands Crawford his weapon before leaning awkwardly against the couch armrest. “Ah— he confirmed Bedelia’s theory about a son figure. And he quoted her, too. _We find our endings in our beginnings._ ”

“He mentioned Walter Graham as being connected, and also Alana Bloom,” Crawford supplies. “He said it has to end with blood because it began with blood, so I’d recommend sending a team to the old Hobbs house, too.”

“That place was torn down years ago,” Bill shakes his head. “No one would buy it.”

“Still wouldn’t hurt,” Holden replies.

“Baltimore,” Wendy suggests. “Lecter’s house. It’s been empty all these years, it’d be the perfect place.”

“We’ll be spread thin across states, but we’ll do it. And hopefully the press conference did more than clog up our goddamn tip line, so we’ll have some civilian eyes out too.” Shepard scrubs a hand down his face. Is this what the war room of a losing side looks like? Defeated generals, lieutenants tossing ideas into the wind? Holden wonders, if he actually were on the side of these tired soldiers, if they would be able to catch Lecter, or if the man would always get the better of them.

“Well, the good news is we know he won’t break pattern, so we’re more or less safe for the rest of the night.” 

“Feels like we’re sitting ducks, though,” Bill huffs.

“But sitting on a very important egg,” Wendy counters, referring to Graham, innocuous in his cell stories beneath their feet. “We find Lecter, and Graham might turn out to be a powerful bargaining chip.”

“So let’s find the fucker,” Shepard growls.

Turning on the lights of the BSU is almost more of a homecoming than his actual coming home, Holden thinks, but welcoming Crawford into their office is almost like showing the man Holden’s childhood bedroom, complete with posters of murderous heroes on the walls and metaphorical stuffed animals on the bed, and Holden has to suppress the urge to scurry ahead and toss exposed papers into drawers like he’s hiding dirty magazines or gym socks. He allows himself to surreptitiously straighten a couple piles on his desk as they enter the space.

Bill laughs at him like he knows exactly what Holden’s doing. Thankfully Crawford doesn’t notice as Bill spreads his arms and starts a dime tour. 

They have time to kill while sitting on their very important egg, their field agents doing their field duties, so they’ve come down to sequester themselves in the BSU and sift through whatever they can get their hands on until they hopefully strike gold. Wendy and Holden arrange the center desks to face one another, the camaraderie an unspoken truce. When Bill and Crawford return, Holden expects Bill to slide into his typical spot at Holden’s side, and is surprised instead when Crawford takes the seat. Even Bill looks thrown off for a second, before taking the chair next to Wendy. After that, they set to work. 

Holden’s on pins and needles the entire evening, distracted knowing they won’t find anything helpful and antsy waiting for the alarm to sound at any second. But those seconds stretch into hours, and soon take-out containers and second and third rounds of coffee cups speckle the explosion of papers and evidence boxes, and when the clock turns over to nine at night, Wendy sighs and sets down her pen.

“I’m calling it a night,” she says. “I’m seeing double.” 

Bill grunts as he stretches his back, grimacing when something pops. “Sounds good to me. Would you like a ride home, sir?” he directs towards Crawford as he gathers up his belongings.

“Ford will take me back, he knows the place,” Crawford answers, not even looking up from his current paper as he catches them by surprise for a third time that day. Holden doesn’t point out that Wendy knows the hotel too, only nods. Crawford’s been trying to get him alone, his own unexpected panic attack throwing a wrench in his plan, so Holden will grant him mercy. 

Wendy’s brow pinches with rejection, but she doesn’t comment as she pulls on her jacket. “Good night, then. Stick by your phones in case anything crops up. You’ll all have your protective details waiting back at your places, but nevertheless. Be vigilant.”

She and Bill head out, and Holden stretches too as he stands. “Ready, sir?” 

Crawford follows. There’s an awkward silence as they make their way upstairs, which has finally quieted down. Barely anyone is left in the bullpen. When they get outside, they find the rain has started in their time in the windowless BSU, falling in a light drizzle over the parking lot, but there are darker clouds on the horizon promising a proper storm. They still hurry to Holden’s car.

Holden doesn’t say anything. He did his awkward small talk earlier; it’s Crawford’s turn to initiate now. 

About fifteen minutes go by before he speaks, and when he does, it’s so quiet that Holden almost doesn’t hear him at first.

“You’ve done good work.”

“Thank you, sir,” Holden says.

“I… I believe I owe you an apology. I misjudged you before. When really, you’re the reason I’m here.”

 _More than you know_ , Holden thinks, though he knows Crawford just means the reason the man’s allowed anywhere near the BSU is because Holden validated his and Graham’s work. 

“No apology necessary, sir,” Holden replies gently. “We all want to see Lecter and Graham and all their friends get what they deserve.” 

Crawford hums. The tick of the turn signal fills the air briefly, before he asks, “Why did you join the BSU?” 

“Sir?”

“I heard you had a promising career in hostage negotiation. You could’ve left my work to rot. Why resurrect it?”

The best lie is one based in truth, Holden thinks. “I grew up in a very… sheltered world. If you couldn’t tell,” Holden says, with a self-deprecating smile, and a glance finds Crawford’s mouth quirking in amusement. “But I saw a lot. And I wanted to make sense of what I was seeing— what makes people act the way they act, think the way they think,” _and why they are so different from me._ “I thought, maybe it’s as easy as psychology, nature vs. nurture, but I wanted to figure it out for myself. And I figured, if I could help stop some bad guys in the meantime, that’s time well spent.”

Crawford falls for it, hook, line, and sinker. “Noble intentions,” he nods. “Just… be careful. You’re walking a road Will Graham once trode. Make sure you don’t take a wrong turn, like he did.”

They lapse into quiet again, Crawford staring out the window at the passing buildings, Holden using his distraction to steer them on a longer route back to the hotel. 

Crawford clears his throat. “I was scared out of my mind when we found Lecter’s safe house. The mess they left behind, the amount of blood, Dolarhyde’s body. I stood on that cliff and all I could think was, God, I hope they died at the bottom of it. But I knew they didn’t. Something as simple as a cliff couldn’t kill them, not after everything they’d come up against.”

Holden stays quiet, so not to break the moment. Whatever Crawford’s looking at, it isn’t out those windows. 

“The funny thing is, I used to be grateful Will and Dr Lecter had each other. I thought I had done a good thing by introducing them. That Will was getting help. I didn’t realize I had handed him over to a man who barely warranted the name.”

The rain is a soft patter on the shell of the car as he continues. “I know I let him down. I know that I’ll have to live the rest of my days knowing that, and regretting that. I thought if I found him, I could somehow make it right, but now I see I can’t.” He huffs, dark and bitter. “So I suppose, even now, I’m still grateful they had one another. It must be lonely in their heads. For Lecter to be that devoid of feeling, or for Will, to be that full of it... I can’t imagine.”

Holden can’t resist asking anymore. “Why did you want me to come with you?”

“To show you what could become of you.” Crawford tilts his head back against the leather headrest. “To show you what risks you face, when you play with these dice.” 

If Holden’s plan fails, it isn’t hard to imagine: himself standing in Will’s cell, facing Bill on the other side. Funny how Holden can happily picture Crawford’s horrified expression a million times, but thinking of Bill’s just once is enough to make his stomach clench. 

For the first time, he feels the barb of anger prickle inside him. He didn’t ask for this. It was his fathers’ decision to force his hand. 

But aren’t parents supposed to know what’s best for their children? Holden’s been running his whole life, since before he knew he was running. Maybe a life on the run isn’t a life at all. Maybe that’s why they came back. Maybe Holden’s as much of a dead man as the man sitting next to him.

The dead man keeps talking. “I won’t pretend to think that continuing the work of the BSU wasn’t a good thing, but I also won’t pretend that it isn’t dangerous. And not just the danger of going up against lunatics with guns and fetishes and no boundaries. I mean that it’s dangerous to your soul. It changes the way you see the world. It colors everything grey.”

Bill’s words weigh on Holden’s tongue. “It takes a certain kind of person to do this job.”

But Crawford shakes his head in disagreement. “No one is immune.”

“Is it a sickness?” 

Crawford laughs, then, dry and empty, and Holden watches him, unsure of what to think of this flayed man. “Not the kind you catch. We’re all fucking born mad.” He looks back at Holden, and there are the shadows of water droplets sliding down his face, illuminated by the passing glow of the street lights. “No one gets out of this alive.” 

It seems this part of the plan worked, too, Holden thinks sourly, as they travel the rest of the journey in silence. Maybe a little too well. Crawford doesn’t see Will in him— he sees himself. 

But Holden doesn’t want to be Jack Crawford. And he won’t be.


	8. Chapter 8

The third and final call comes just after one in the morning. Holden comes to in his kitchen— he’s been zoned out for who knows how long, staring unseeing at the half-made sandwich on the counter in front of him. He’d been absently slicing a half-mush tomato, and the knife is still poised in his hands. 

He sets it down and wipes the juice off his bandaged hand with a towel as best he can before grabbing the receiver. Bill’s voice is echoing on the other end before Holden can even say hello.

“Graham escaped.” 

Bill would hear it if he smiled, so Holden forces himself to sound shocked. “What? When? _How?_ ”

“Shift change found his cell empty and Ronnie’s throat slit five minutes ago, but all the fucking cameras are turned off down there for some fucking reason,” Bill growls. Holden winces, sending another silent _sorry, Ronnie_ up towards the ceiling. Poor guy probably wasn’t even awake to see it coming. “Graham took his gun, too. They think he got out through a service exit. What happened while you were down there?” Bill asks. “Did you see anything?”

Time to sell it. “What? What I told you, Bill. We turned our guns over to Ronnie, I had to run back because I forgot I still had my pocket knife, we got to Graham’s cell and Crawford gave him the file for him to look at the pho—” Holden pauses. Doubt digs her claws into his vocal chords. “You don’t think— no, that’s ridiculous, he’d never—”

“He’d never _what_ , Holden, spit it out!”

“You don’t think there was something in the file, do you?” 

Bill is silent over the line. If he’d made the accusation any other day, Bill might not believe him, but Holden knows his ego is bruised, being passed up by Crawford for Holden, all but ignored at each meeting, Crawford taking his spot at the BSU. Even if just subconsciously, he’s _waiting_ for a reason to turn on Crawford, to doubt the man’s legitimacy. So Holden gives him one on a silver platter, because Bill deserves it— Holden’s been feeling the chafe of Bill’s absence, too. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bill hisses. “Wendy just went to go call him, I can’t tell her this or she’ll chase me out of the state, you know how she admires him. Damn it, Holden, you should’ve kept your eyes on him—” 

Holden interrupts to pretend to come to Crawford’s defense. “Why would Crawford even want him out, though? Wouldn’t he want Graham in prison?”

But Bill supplies his own logic. “Think about _after_ all this, Holden. Yeah, Crawford was right that they’re alive, but he didn’t just drop the ball, he stabbed it to death with an ice pick. Shepard was going to fire him— officially— the second we got Lecter in custody. There’s no honor in that.”

“He let Graham out to finish it himself.”

“ _Fuck,_ maybe. Hopefully Graham doesn’t care, and just sticks to his original plan. Wendy and I are headed to the Verger estate, she’s got a theory about Alana Bloom being the third victim. Meet us there?”

“Yeah, of course. What do we do about Crawford?”

“Wendy’s arranging his escort to take him there, too. We just gotta pray we get there first, so hurry.” 

Bill hangs up. Holden stares at his handset for a long moment, before setting it back with a click. Almost as soon as he sets it down it starts to ring again, but this time he doesn’t answer. 

He makes his way back to his kitchen, to his dejected sandwich. It’s like someone’s turned up the resolution on his vision— every detail is thrown into stark relief, down to the cracks in his backsplash or the grout in the tile. Time stretches like taffy. The ring of the phone is the manic laugh sitting ready in his chest. 

A smile tugs at his mouth, starting small but broadening, pulling into a grin.

There’s a knock at the door. 

Holden grabs the knife.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhh hahah ok ok ok i realize how cruel it was to give such a tiny chapter eight when this one ends on a bit of a cliffhanger too (i'm SORRY i love them), so i decided to go ahead and post this one a day early to beg your forgiveness. it's from Jack's perspective, and it was my absolute favorite to write.

When Bella died, Jack wanted to follow, because that’s what he always had done, with Bella: he followed, like the love-dopey sap in a romcom, trailing after her ribbons in the breeze. It was the kind of love he never thought he could have, and certainly never thought he deserved. A man whose life was so entrenched in misery and violence, a man who knew all too well what fucked-up cruelties his fellow man was capable of, beyond what was palatable for the horror flicks and war reels played to the masses at the drive-in. 

But then he met Bella, and instead of dragging her down with him, she pulled him up into the sunshine, and coming home every night felt like taking a deep breath he could actually fill his lungs with. He never smiled as much as he did when he was with her. He never knew love could take up every inch of you. 

When Jack had met Will Graham, he thought the man was like the old him. A loveless man. Only the cracks in his veneer deepened before someone like Bella could come and smooth them away, and instead Will Graham got Hannibal Lecter, and his twisted version of cruelty that the monster called love, and nothing had made Jack want to follow Bella more than to hide from what Jack had inadvertently done to Will Graham. But Bella would have smacked him right out of the afterlife for his cowardice. Not that the life he chose was all that better, but still— even if he didn’t get out much nowadays, he still searched. He searched and searched and searched. Because he owed it to Will to try. To try and pull him back into the light.

But Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter are only found if they want to be found, and they certainly won’t be pulled anywhere. Will’s no dog. His pack roamed wild because he did, too. They learned obedience because they respected Will, and Jack, sadly, doesn’t think he ever earned Will’s respect. 

Because Jack didn’t pull, he pushed, until Will fell off the highest shelf. 

And now there is Holden Ford. Jack had stumbled back into the real world to face his ghosts and instead he found Holden Ford with the steel rod up his ass, prim and proper and everything Jack and Will weren’t, until Jack stood behind that mirror wall and watched Holden transform. The facade crumbled, and out came a man who could slide under your skin until you felt your fingers twitch for a knife to cut him out. 

Or maybe that’s just Jack’s guilt talking. He doesn’t want another brilliant rookie punk in arm’s reach. Jack has a lot of souls to answer for when he finally dies: he didn’t want Holden Ford to be another.

But fuck, the kid really does grow on you. Like a fungus.

Jack had made a fool of himself in the basement at Quantico. And instead of letting Jack fester in his own humiliation, Holden had crouched down next to him and talked him through it. This man he barely knew, whom Jack had treated so unfairly, had shown kindness when Jack needed it most. That’s why Jack had brought him down there, to watch his and Will’s final goodbyes. To tell him to run. To tell him to get the fuck out of there before this became him.

Jack isn’t sleeping. The hotel they’ve set him up in is very nice, too much gold crown molding in the lobby but the rooms are unassuming and the bed is like sleeping on a cloud, but he’s not going to even pretend to try and get some rest. Tomorrow is the third day. Someone is going to die, unless Jack can stop it, and God help him, Jack is going to catch Hannibal Lecter if it’s the last thing he does. 

Or maybe he isn’t sleeping because of the terrible, awful feeling in his left knee. 

Bella used to call him a two-bit fortune teller, because he always knew when it was going to storm, because his left knee would start to ache. But it’s already raining, and Jack’s knee is still aching.

Wendy Carr’s voice is with Bella’s in his head trying to reassure him. They’ve got protective details on every potential victim, even a coked-out Walter Graham. They’ve got a 24/7 tip line blowing up at headquarters with a team following every feasible lead. Every marina and airport on the east coast has their eyes peeled. Hannibal Lecter isn’t slipping through their fingers again. 

Jack likes Wendy. He thinks Bella would have too. 

The phone shrieks on the bedside table and Jack answers it before the first ring finishes. 

“Crawford.”

“Jack, thank God. We didn’t know if you and Holden had made it home.” It’s Wendy. She sounds breathless.

“What’s happened?” he makes himself ask, but he already knows. 

“Will Graham escaped. He got out of his cell somehow, we don’t know how, but— he killed six men, got out through a service exit and stole a car. We have no idea where he is, but we have an idea where he’s headed, and we need—”

“Are you sure Holden’s home?” Jack’s already up, shoving the phone between his ear and shoulder and grabbing for the hotel stationary pad and pen. “What’s his phone number?”

“What?” The question has caught Wendy off guard. “Sir, I’m sure Holden’s fine, I think Bill’s on the phone with him now. Holden can take care of himself— it’s Alana Bloom we should be worried about.”

“Alana?” Jack blinks at the flowery wallpaper across from his bed. 

“‘We find our endings in our beginnings,’ that’s what Graham said, right? The question was _whose_ beginning. We’ve got a team going to the Lecter mansion in Baltimore, another going to the old Hobbs’ cabin, but Bill and Holden and I are going to the Verger estate. I kept thinking about Bedelia’s table— Holden’s not the only one who knows about flowers. I double-checked when we got back. Lilies are representative of motherhood, too, _and_ they’re considered the flower of _the Virgin Mary_.”

“Mother of a fatherless son,” Jack thinks out loud, to Wendy’s noise of agreement. 

“Exactly! The Verger fiasco marked the beginning of the Graham and Lecter dynamic we know today. I’m sending a car your way, they’ll have their sirens on so you’ll get here fast. We—”

“What is Holden’s number, Wendy?”

“Holden’s fine, Jack, I swear—”

“I’m just going to call him real quick, it won’t take more than a second. I need to know he’s alright.”

She sighs, exasperated, but relents. “Okay.” She gives him Holden’s number, and he scribbles it down. 

“I’ll call you back in a minute,” Jack promises, and hangs up. He punches in Holden’s number with shaking hands.

 _Pick up, Holden. For fuck’s sake, pick up pick up pick up._

He gets the answering machine. 

He slams the phone back down in its receiver. Wendy’s probably right, he’s probably already in his car on the way to the Vergers. But damn, damn, _damn_ Jack’s left knee. He’s learned to trust that thing. Especially when it proved right that Will and Hannibal really did survive that fall. 

It’s been thirty-three years. Jack’s not going to start doubting himself now. But Wendy’s not going to listen to Jack’s knee. Which means he has to lie to Wendy.

He crosses the room and rummages through his suit jacket pockets until he finds what he’s looking for, then settles on the bed by the phone again. He calls Wendy back, and she picks up halfway through the first ring, just like he did earlier. 

“Well?”

“Caught him just as he was headed out the door. He’ll meet us there," he lies, forcing his tone to be light so not to rouse suspicion. “Send the car my way, I’ll be two minutes behind you on the road.”

Jack can practically feel Wendy’s relief over the wire. They say their goodbyes, and Jack doesn’t even set the phone back in its cradle before he’s dialing the number on Shepard’s business card that he’d given Jack when they’d first met. Shepard’s already on his way to the Verger estate, too, Jack knows, so he’s not surprised when he gets a secretary.

He makes his voice aloof again. He likes to consider himself a decent actor. Had Hannibal fooled for a while there, didn’t he? Even if the performance earned him a glass shard through the neck. 

“Hello, this is Jack Crawford. I just got off the phone with Dr. Carr, and she’s sending me a car, but she also said to have it pick up Agent Holden Ford and we hung up before I realized I don’t have his home address. Could I get that from you real quick?” 

The secretary is happy to oblige, and Jack jots down the address. He barely says thanks before hanging up and yanking on his jacket and shoes, grabbing his gun, and bolting out the door.

It’s pouring down rain still as he hails a taxi, and he tells the driver he’ll tip him obscenely if the taxi grows wings and _flies_. The city passes in a rush of colors, and Jack’s knee is practically screaming when he finally gets out at Holden’s building.

One look confirms something’s wrong. There’s no security detail waiting out front. 

There’s a woman coming out just as Jack makes it up the steps, so he rushes past her into the entrance. He rides the elevator to Holden’s floor, and the doors open, and—

Two officers are lying dead in the hallway. One’s neck is at an unnatural angle, the other has a pool of blood under his head. And just beyond them, Holden’s apartment door is wide open.

Jack jumps over the officers and bursts inside. He bellows Holden’s name, but there’s no answer. 

A quick sweep proves the small apartment has no signs of life, and Jack circles back and ends up in the kitchen, gulping air to try and catch his breath. Will has Holden. Alana Bloom was a red herring. Holden is the sacrifice. The fourth chair. 

_We find our endings in our beginnings_. Where would he take him? Baltimore? Hannibal’s office had been bought and sold and turned into a dentist’s; his house is a tourist attraction. They wouldn’t pick either, not now they’ve become so base. Hobbs’ cabin was the beginning of the Ripper’s relationship with Will Graham, not Hannibal Lecter’s. Not Quantico, either, even if it’s where they all first met— Will’s reappearance there had checked that box. No, it had to be somewhere more personal. Significant. A place of transformation. _It began with blood_. But whose blood?

Only a fool would say Will Graham became what he is because of someone else— Jack knows this, because he was that fool. But this was always inside of Will Graham. Inside his own blood. 

And where did Will Graham begin, Jack realizes with slow-dawning dread, but Wolf Trap? 

His heart is still racing but he’s got his breath back, and he looks around the kitchen, wondering where Holden might keep his car keys. Nothing in here, Jack notes, but there is a cutting board on the counter with a half-sliced tomato, though there’s no knife in sight. Maybe Holden grabbed it to protect himself with his gun out of reach, Jack thinks. _Damn fool_.

He finds the keys in a little dish in the entry, and he runs out into the hall again, pounding on the door across the way as he does. He yells “call the police!” through the wood before jumping into the opening elevator. 

He finds Holden’s car through the rain, and slams it into gear. He still knows the route to Wolf Trap by heart. He’s traveled there too many times in his dreams to ever forget. 

He breaks the speed limit and a million traffic laws but thankfully the streets are almost empty, it’s so late at night. Or actually, Jack notices as he looks at the dashboard clock, early in the day. The third day. He presses the gas pedal closer to the floor. 

The rain is coming down in sheets, shattering across the hood of Holden’s car like glass, windshield wipers working furiously to let Jack see the road ahead. The tires almost hydroplane once, but he manages to yank the wheel back onto the asphalt, narrowly avoiding a ditch. 

Time bends, space bends, and then he’s there, turning onto the long familiar road snaking towards Will’s old house. 

The Wolf Trap residence had been seized by the FBI following Will’s presumed death. Will had still been paying the property bills even as he moved off with Molly and Walter, probably the result of some deep-buried part of his psyche trying to cling to whatever he had left of Hannibal and their old life, but after his cliff plunge, Jack had been the sole levee stopping the FBI from liquidating the land, using what little was left of his leverage to make sure they kept paying the mortgage. Maybe that was Jack trying to cling to what he had left of Will. Regardless, the house has stood empty and solemn, a mausoleum to a memory, a pathetic attempt at an apology that Jack had thought no one would ever hear.

But at the end of the road, for the first time in three decades, the house is aglow. 

Jack can see why Will loved this place: it looks like a beacon in the storm. There are candles flickering in all the windows— the electricity bills haven’t been paid in years, after all— throwing dancing orange shadows across the panes. Dawn is still a few hours away, so there’s not much else to see by, other than the occasional lightning strike. If Jack squints, it almost looks like they’re out at sea. 

The gravel road crunches under the tires as he approaches, but he doesn’t bother turning off his headlights. They’re already expecting him. There are two cars waiting in the drive that Jack pulls up alongside; one hood is still warm to the touch when he lays a hand on it, but the other is cold. It’s been here a while. Hannibal’s probably been lying low here this whole time, and it hadn’t even occurred to any of them to check. 

Jack takes out his gun. Rain streams down his face, but he still walks haltingly up the front steps. He needs to get Holden out of there, that urgency making his heart race beneath his skin, but he also, selfishly, doesn’t want to face whatever’s waiting on the other side of the door. 

But he has to. For Holden, for the Will Graham he once knew, for Miriam, for Bella, for himself— he has to face his ghosts. 

He opens the door. 

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here it is.
> 
> Holden’s a dramatic bb, just like his fathers, but I think he’s earned it.

While Jack Crawford is halfway across Virginia discovering the bloodshed in Holden’s apartment hallway, Holden is climbing out of the passenger seat of a stolen car in front of the Wolf Trap house. Rain slides cold fingers under his shirt collar as he leaves the car’s shelter, raising goosebumps along his skin, but delight floods through him as Will comes around from the driver’s side to join him. They both tilt their faces to the rain as they look up at the house. 

Holden’s never been here before. The bungalow shows its age, paint chipped and peeling, more than one of the windows broken, but it’s still standing against the rain. In addition to the candles lining all the windows to light their way, there’s an oil lantern sputtering on the front porch and another car alongside theirs, presumably also stolen, indicating the house is already occupied. Holden couldn’t fight his grin if he tried. A glance at Will confirms his dad feels the same. 

They hurry up the front steps of the porch, dodging a gushing stream of water from the dilapidated gutter overhead. The door swings open to meet them, revealing a beaming Hannibal, and for the second time that night, Holden is yanked into a bone-crushing hug. 

Holden buries his face into Hannibal’s neck, arms coming up to squeeze back just as tightly, relishing the feeling of his tėtis’ warm and solid muscle under his fingers. Alive, safe, and _here_. There’s a gun in his waistband, but Holden pays it no mind. 

It’s too soon when Hannibal pulls back, but he doesn’t go far, bringing his hands to cup Holden’s face, eyes brimming with affection as they search his. His tėtis is still as golden as the old-world god he is in Holden’s dreams. “ _Mylimasis_ ,” Hannibal says reverently. “At last.” 

He lifts one hand and reaches out, opening the embrace, and Will steps into the vacant space, twining his arms around them both until they’re all sharing the same air, foreheads pressed together. Their little family is reunited, and Holden feels more complete than he has in a decade. 

“Come in, come in!” Hannibal says, finally stepping back, “Out of this rain or we’ll all catch our death.” He locks one hand around Holden’s though, as reluctant to let go as Holden is. 

They follow Hannibal inside. Will picks up the lantern to bring the glow with them, though the front room they enter is surprisingly well lit; even more candles sit on the empty bookshelves and the dusty counters of the kitchen. It’s empty of furniture save for a long wooden table, polished to a high shine, with four chairs positioned around it. More candles burn on its surface, but it isn’t set for dinner. The last supper was yesterday. 

Holden sets his knife down carefully to dull its clatter. The oil lantern joins it. When Holden turns, he finds his fathers watching him, and butterflies swarm in a tiny hurricane in his stomach. 

“Look at you,” Hannibal murmurs. He reaches a hand up again to push Holden’s rain-sodden hair away from his face, and Holden’s eyes flutter closed as he leans into the touch. “Beautiful. You’re a man now.” 

Holden’s eyes open, and he lifts his head from Hannibal’s hand, exposing his cheek to the cool air. “Is that why you did this?” he asks, trying to control his voice, to keep the uncertainty from bleeding through, but he’s sure he fails.

The warm glow of the candles make his tėtis’ maroon eyes shine a deep red. They’re sympathetic, but not repentant. “You would not have been satisfied with your life if we hadn’t done this, Holden. You would have spent the rest of your years pretending to be ordinary, waiting for a purpose. That’s not what you want.”

“How do you know what I want?” Holden asks. He wishes it didn’t sound like a reproach, and he wishes they didn’t have to have this conversation, but they do, or else Holden won’t know why he’s here, not really.

Will’s voice is quiet against the patter of the rain, when he speaks. “Because I was in your shoes. Right where you’re standing.” 

His dad adjusts his newly acquired glasses. He’d shown up at Holden’s door clutching Ronnie’s gun and dressed in civilian clothes, though not the same ones he’d been wearing when Holden had first seen him in the interrogation room, meaning he’d had a stash somewhere nearby, a pit stop between Quantico and Holden’s apartment. His fathers had been so confident in Holden’s ability to get him out, get them here. But Holden can’t let himself take credit, it was all bullshit, complete luck— if even one thing had been different, if Ronnie had called in sick that day, if Glinda had looked up when Holden passed with a pocketful of contraband, if Crawford had flipped open the file, hell, if Crawford hadn’t asked Holden to visit Will with him, their whole scheme would’ve fallen apart. That’s a lot of fucking faith to have in someone. The walls start pressing in around them, the candle flames growing taller, stealing all the oxygen.

Will keeps talking, and Holden finds himself clinging to the words like a lifeline. “Before I… _understood_ your tėtis, I was lost, quite literally wandering the streets at night, looking for something I couldn’t even name. I didn’t trust anyone, least of all myself. There were so many crazies fighting for control in my head that I didn’t know which thoughts were mine, buried underneath all the muck, and I was _inches_ away from losing my mind entirely.” He looks at Hannibal, and Hannibal doesn’t bother with remorse. They’re well acquainted with their old wounds. “My metamorphosis didn’t happen in three days. It took years, and your tėtis and I certainly didn’t have a _painless_ love story, but every minute, my own thoughts grew louder, and my vision grew clearer, until I could finally see myself, see _us,_ and the world we were destined to make.”

He reaches out and takes Holden’s hands, turning them upwards to inspect his palms, the red-stained bandage still snugly tied around one. He unravels the knot and methodically unwraps the gauze, peeling it back to reveal the angry red skin underneath, the cut, the dried blood along the slice. The fabric flutters forgotten to the floor. “We always wanted you to choose for yourself, sweetheart, and we still do. We just want to make sure your eyes are open. We want to make sure you can find _yourself_ , while you’ve been out looking for us.”

Hannibal picks up Holden’s knife from the tabletop and judges its weight, before placing it in Holden’s open palm and curling Holden’s fingers around it. Even though it makes his bared cut shriek in pain, Holden grips it hard. “Whatever you choose, we’ll support you,” Hannibal says. “We are so proud of you.”

And Holden thinks, _okay._

He can do this. He can do this for them, just like he’s always wanted to, because they deserve that, they deserve someone who will fight for them and their happiness, for once and for all, but more than that— he can do this for himself. To become who he was meant to be, even if it’s painful, even if it changes his world, turning it upside down and inside out. It’s _his_ world. He’s not going to live his life as a spectator, or a specter, a moment more.

He gives them both a wobbly smile. “You couldn’t have just sent a card?”

Will chuckles, though his eyes are wet. “Blame mister drama queen over here.”

Hannibal puffs his chest. “You needed a narrative befitting your rise,” he argues, which makes Holden laugh.

“I think you mean _doctor_ drama queen,” he tells Will, but even Hannibal’s mouth surrenders to a smile, and Holden feels the last knot in his chest unspool and fall to the floor with the gauze. 

Headlights cut across his fathers’ faces, and their grins fall. 

Crawford.

An idea flickers to life in Holden’s mind, and he tucks the knife in his waistband at the small of his back. “Follow my lead,” he tells them, tapping Will’s arm and motioning for Hannibal to get his gun out. Their matching expressions are nothing short of wicked.

“Anywhere,” Hannibal tells him. 

There’s the thunk of a car door swinging shut, and then footfalls up the creaking wooden steps. Lightning flashes, briefly illuminating the room like an electric shock.

Will wraps a steady, solid arm around Holden’s collarbone and tugs him back against his chest, and Holden is taller now than he was at six, at nine, at fifteen, but it still feels like the safest place in the world. To an outsider, though, it looks like Will’s holding him captive, all but a knife at his throat. Holden contorts his expression to look scared. On his other side, Hannibal points his gun at the door. 

It opens.

Crawford steps through.

His own gun is raised, and there’s a clap of thunder just as the door slams shut on its hinges.

“Put the gun down,” Crawford orders— in vain. Of course neither man moves. Another lightning strike and rumble of thunder chase the words from the room. Crawford doesn’t make eye contact with Holden, focusing on Hannibal’s weapon, but he aims a question in Holden’s direction. “Are you hurt?” Holden might even say he sounds concerned, but he knows he isn’t— he’s just scared of cementing his legacy of leading the young to their deaths under the pretense of justice. It’s a wonder the man’s fingers aren’t dripping with blood. 

Holden doesn’t answer. Hannibal does for him.

“Young Holden here is not on the menu tonight, I can assure you,” he says.

Crawford snarls. “You shut the fuck up.”

“That’s very rude, Jack,” Will tuts. His breath rustles the hair by Holden’s ear.

Crawford’s eyes are wild and beseeching when they flash to his old friend. “Just let him go, Will. This has nothing to do with him. It’s between you and me.” 

“Quite the contrary,” Hannibal replies. “Holden’s a key player in tonight’s show. Or do you find our reunion here in Wolf Trap coincidental?”

“You don’t play with coincidences,” Crawford snaps, quoting Bedelia, and he realizes halfway through the words what they’re implying. “What—”

“What’s the fun in catching a mouse in its hole?” Hannibal asks, but the question is rhetorical. He starts to amble slowly along the edges of the room, making Crawford mirror him subconsciously, putting distance between himself and the door as Hannibal coaxes him further into the room. “No, one must provide a lure. Not only set the trap, but the cheese.” 

“You— you talk of lures, but _Will_ was—” Crawford trails off. He’s quickly losing what little footing he had.

“The fisherman, yes. Tell me, Jack, do you think yourself more a mouse or a fish? Is this,” with his gun, Hannibal gestures to the house, to Wolf Trap at large, “a _trap_ , or a net?” 

“Either way,” Will speaks up, tensing his hold around Holden’s shoulders, “you’re prey.” 

Crawford bumps into the table and his expression flares with panic as he sees Hannibal has blocked the doorway. His fingers twitch nervously on his gun. He could pull the trigger, but he’s cornered, and if he misses, they’d descend on him like wolves. 

Crawford lowers his gun.

“Fine. It’s me you want,” he growls, “so here I am. Let Agent Ford go.”

“Nonsense,” Hannibal replies, and Holden watches as his lips pull back to reveal his teeth in a crude smile, and Holden inhales the familiar smell of his dad behind him, absorbs the sounds of the sighing house, the rain beyond, the earth oblivious to the metamorphosis taking place in this rotting cocoon, inside Holden himself, and he’d close his eyes to trace it to its core, the silk shell uncoiling to reveal the creature at its heart, but he really, really wants to see Crawford’s face when he finally realizes what’s happening.

Hannibal’s voice is clear and steady as it echoes across the room. “How will a cub learn to kill if he does not watch his parents?” 

“What does that—” Crawford starts to ask, but then his voice ceases, like someone’s hit the mute button. 

For a suspended moment, Crawford doesn’t seem to breathe. He gapes like a fish, drowning in mid-air, and Holden watches with something ravenous in his gut, and he almost smothers it back before he remembers he’s allowed to show it, now. So he licks his lips as they part into a smirk.

Crawford sucks in a horrified breath. The gun dangles, forgotten, at his side.

Will presses a kiss to the side of Holden’s head, and Holden revels in the blessing and steps forward, out of his dad’s grip. Hannibal doesn’t move but it’s like the shadows are called forward to surround him, so Crawford stares only at Holden, slowly prowling across the no man’s land between them. His fathers will be there in less than a heartbeat if anything goes awry, but at the moment, they’re giving the stage to Holden. 

The curtain finally pulled back, Holden has imagined Crawford’s expression in this moment a hundred times over the past three days, the blooming horror, the staggering shock. But never once did Holden imagine that Crawford wouldn’t look scared, or confused, or even angry. 

Instead, the man in front of him looks _sad_. Deeply, desperately sad, his heartbreak as loud as the thunder, and if Holden were the son of different men, he might feel a stab of sympathy. Maybe even empathy. 

But he isn’t, and he doesn’t. 

“Holden—” Crawford gasps. “This can’t be—”

“True? It is, sir,” he answers. He draws the knife from his waistband, the silver glinting in the blaze of the candles, and Crawford’s eyes dart away to it and back to Holden. 

“You’re—”

“Holden Graham-Lecter,” Holden says, and it feels ridiculously good to say his name out loud for someone to _hear_. “Nice to properly meet you.”

“How?” Crawford manages. It sounds like a plea. Begging Holden to say it’s all pretend. 

“I don’t think we really need a discussion about the birds and the bees, do we? Seeing as—” teasing, he trails off with a gesture to his fathers. “You can’t be _that_ surprised, though, really. We’ve told you from the beginning. A frayed end. A successor. The fourth seat, for a son.” 

Another clap of thunder booms, rattling the frail, rotted walls of the house. 

“Thirty-three years,” Crawford whispers.

“High time for a resurrection.”

At Crawford’s side, the polished table reflects the candlelight, almost like it’s on fire itself. When Crawford speaks, he’s desperate, scrabbling at a surface that has no grooves or handholds. “You— you said you continued my work to— to know more about nature vs nurture, right? That you wanted to figure out which one was more important? You can figure it out, right here, Holden, the answer is right here— you don’t have to be this. You— you don’t have to be them.”

“I’m not,” Holden agrees, and Crawford falters, not sure if he should fall for the hope that Holden dangles in front of him. “I’m not them, and I don’t have to be, I know that now. But maybe… I _could_ be. If I wanted to. If doing bad things to people who deserve them,” Holden taps the blade’s tip to the pad of the finger, feather-light so he doesn’t draw blood, but it still holds the promise to draw blood, a fatal kiss, “feels good.” 

“It doesn’t feel good, Holden,” Crawford insists. “It’s terrible. It destroys you, it rips you apart, it makes you less than human.” He looks at Will, as if directing the words to both father and son. “I was too late before, I know that, and I am so sorry, but I can atone for that, now. Let me save you, Holden.”

“You know, I never really understood the Easter story. They tell us God’s son died for our sins, but really he was dying for his _father’s_ sins, who made this world of pain and hatred in the first place. It didn’t seem fair.”

“It isn’t, so please, Holden, please—”

“But I think I get it now. Because it’s not about paying for the father’s sins, not really. It’s about the world that wasn’t good enough for the son. The men that failed him. The man.”

“Pontius,” Crawford says, barely a whisper. 

Holden lifts his chin and inhales deeply. “I debated how to kill you,” he tells Crawford. “How I would make you pay, for what you did to them, and to me, making me hide, making me unsure. What would be worthy of them. Do you know what I decided?” He feels Will shift behind him, readying, and Hannibal beyond that, bracing. It isn’t in Crawford’s nature to go quietly, or else he would have done so years before, and Holden shouldn’t have all the fun, should he? “I decided, you’re already dead. So all that’s left to do is bury you.”

Crawford’s face plummets, hope decimating, fear and sadness swallowed by resignation as he accepts yet another one of his failures. He scrubs at his face with one hand, brow pinching, but this isn’t a nightmare he can just wake up from. “You’re right, Holden, I am dead.” He looks up. “But so are they. And there’s room for more than one in this grave.”

In one smooth motion Crawford raises his gun and fires. The bullet slices through the air, straight towards Hannibal, but Hannibal had anticipated the shot and dodged the brunt of it, though it still clips his arm. Almost before the bullet’s bitten, Will launches and tackles Crawford to the ground, knocking the gun from his hands and sending it skidding across the hardwood towards Holden’s shoes, and Holden scoops it up as Will clambers on top of Crawford. His dad curls his fingers around the meat of Crawford’s neck as Hannibal slides forward to grab Crawford’s flailing arms, pinning them down, and the floor shakes under the tumult, sending the candles flaring high. 

Holden lets Will squeeze until Crawford starts to choke, then he places a hand on Will’s shoulder.

“That’s enough, Dad,” he says, just so Crawford can hear him say the word. Will lets go and moves away, and so does Hannibal, and Holden steps forward to take Will’s place, looming over Crawford where he sprawls, wheezing.

Holden holds the knife to Crawford’s throat. The man’s Adam’s apple bobs erratically as he sucks air through his bruised trachea, and the flesh splits just a little bit under the blade, red blood blooming and sparkling like rubies. All it would take is an inch more. 

Wordlessly, he turns the knife around and offers the handle to Crawford. 

They stare at each other for eons, and Holden makes sure to hide nothing in his eyes, until, with a trembling hand, Crawford reaches up and takes the knife. Holden backs away to join his fathers by the door, not daring to blink. 

The knife falls through Crawford’s fingers and clatters to the ground beside him. “No,” Crawford coughs, as he turns his face to the ceiling and closes his eyes, defeated at last. “No. I’ll burn for what I did.”

He kicks out and strikes the leg of the table, sending the oil lantern crashing over the edge to the floor, shattering into a million pieces, and flames roar across the brittle wood.

Hannibal grips Holden’s arm and tugs him out the door, and Will follows, but not before rearing back and landing a solid kick to the doorframe. It groans under his contact, but he keeps kicking, finally getting to destroy the last remnant of his old life, and the wood gives out.

They run, the house succumbing to the surging flames behind them, candles toppling and adding to the blaze as the foundation splinters and crumbles. They run, rain falling like needles against their skin. They run and take shelter in the barn, where they can watch the spectacle from a safe distance. 

It’s a beautiful scene: the house consumed, the flames dancing beneath the razing downpour, and beyond that, a strip of bright yellow waits at the horizon, foretelling the storm will end. It’s over. In all the ways Holden could have ended this, fire hadn’t occurred to him— but now he sees it was the best possible choice. Befitting his nature. And rhyming with history, much like another night, years ago, only this time, it ends with a family, safe and whole and together.

They all pant to catch their breath. Beside him, Hannibal is holding his shoulder, where Crawford’s bullet had struck. “Are you alright?” Holden asks his tėtis, who nods. 

“Just a graze,” he assures. “Didn’t even nick the muscle. I’ve had much worse, _mylimasis_.”

“Not as quick in your old age,” Will teases, though one hand still goes around Holden’s back to tangle with his husband’s fingers. He holds out his other hand from the barn’s cover, and the water pools quickly in his palm. “They won’t see the smoke for a while with this rain,” he says.

Holden nods. “The flames will level the whole place. We can let them think the both of you were inside.”

“It could burn more than that,” Hannibal says, and Holden knows what he means. Holden could burn, too. He could let this life disappear like ashes in the wind, and no one would ever know that he made it out. He could go anywhere, be anything— anyone. He could go home. Go with his fathers.

Will is watching him with a soft, bittersweet smile on his face, because he already knows Holden’s decision, and he doesn’t begrudge him for it.

“No,” Holden says with an exhale. “No, I’ll stay. My work here isn’t done yet.” He looks to Hannibal, who shares Will’s smile. “You made a world for me, even before I was yours— when you went over that cliff, you left… inspiration. People trying to make themselves in your image. I want to see how close they get. How close they can get to _me_.”

Will’s hand closes over his, and Holden squeezes back as tightly as he can. “I can see all that I am now,” he tells them. The flames dance in Will’s eyes, and Holden’s reflect them, rising up to the dark sky. “I’m not afraid.”

His fathers take Hannibal’s car when they depart, because there are no witnesses for it ever having been there— their tire tracks are already disappearing in the mud. Will’s remaining stolen car will serve as reasonable belief that they perished in the flames, along with Jack Crawford. The Wolf Trap house is ablaze adrift at sea, and water doesn’t preserve its travelers’ ashes. 

Holden watches them go. Then he waits an hour more in the harbor of the barn, watching the house fold in on itself, the wood kindling smoldering like gold, just to be absolutely certain the earth is wiped clean of their stage, before he gets into his own car, which Crawford thankfully had left the keys in. 

He drives to the nearest gas station, which is still another thirty minutes away, and asks the bleary-eyed cashier if he can use their phone. 

An operator patches him through, and Holden smiles when he hears Bill’s voice.

“Bill? Don’t freak out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VOILA.
> 
> all that’s left is a little epilogue, but i hope i hope i hope this was everything it built up to be. this chapter was ENTIRELY self-indulgent, in that it was everything i’ve ever wanted from a super dramatic reveal scene. also i really do love Jack and Bedelia on the show, but like. we needed a lil revenge
> 
> thank you thank you for all of your support, i’ve cherished every comment. i’m so grateful.


	11. Epilogue

Bill doesn’t freak out, or if he does it’s in the privacy of his car and not on the phone with Holden, though the swarm that descended upon Wolf Trap and the smoldering remains of Will Graham’s house is practically apocalyptic. There are so many vehicles clogging the drive that they’ve completely forgone the road and have taken to parking haphazardly in the field— Holden can count a dozen cop cars, an FBI tactical squad van, and three fire trucks, even though the fire has finally devoured the hull of the house and has come to a simmer underneath the light drizzle of rain. The storm is receding, finally, its job done, and that sliver of sunshine Holden had seen on the horizon is stretching its arms over the field as if reaching for him. He tilts his face to meet it.

He’s in the back of one of the two ambulances, having been fussed over by the EMTs and declared soaked and probably traumatized but ultimately unharmed. Someone’s draped a thick woolen shock blanket over his shoulders, which had seemed absurd and mildly embarrassing at first, but now he’s irrationally grateful for its steadying weight. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine it’s his dad’s arms, wrapped around him once more. 

His heart twinges. Of course a part of him is always going to want to be with his parents, but that’s the curse of all children entering the adult world. He’s no exception, despite his exceptional upbringing. He’s come up against quite a few people with their heads in their histories these past few days, that Holden doesn’t want to mirror— a man who lives in fear of the past has no future, as Hannibal always said. 

He half-listens to the buzz of commotion around him, until a pair of shoes steps into his line of vision. He looks up, and there’s Bill, who looks exhausted and frazzled and overwhelmingly relieved. 

“You okay?” Bill asks, going for a casual clap on Holden’s shoulder over the blanket, but holding it for a few seconds longer than qualifies as casual, until he’s just kind of gripping Holden’s shoulder. Holden doesn’t even think about shrugging him off. They’ve been so used to spending every waking moment together that the past three days have been an unwelcome interruption, and Holden’s missed his partner just as much as he’s apparently missed him. God help him, he might actually be looking forward to road school.

“I’m okay,” Holden confirms, giving his best Mormon-boy smile, just to get Bill to chuckle. He does, though it breaks in the middle and they both pretend not to notice.

Bill drops his hand, brushing aside his jacket flaps to set his hands on his hips instead. He surveys the field before them, the decimated house.

“Jesus Christ, Holden,” he mutters in disbelief, and Holden can’t help but throw his head back and laugh. Bill looks at him like he’s finally snapped, but Holden keeps laughing. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, swiping at a tear that’s managed to escape down his cheek. “It’s been a crazy night.” 

“A crazy morning, now,” comes Shepard’s voice, and both partners turn to watch him approach, picking his way through the mud, Wendy right behind him in sensible rubber rain boots. The rain’s not heavy enough to warrant an umbrella, but Wendy still manages to look dignified, while Holden’s certain he looks like a drowned kitten. They really should invite her out into the field more, Holden thinks as Wendy nears. She looks comfortable here, even in the wake of tragedy.

It takes a certain kind of person, says the Bill in Holden’s head.

“You’re getting a week's paid leave, no argument,” Shepard tells him. Holden opens his mouth to, well, argue. “Nope,” Shepard shuts him up, “One word and it turns into two. Hell of a shit show this all turned out to be.” He squints at Holden, momentarily sincere. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” Holden repeats.

“You give your statement?”

“I did.” He’d given it twice, actually— once to the first cop on the scene, and again to the lead sergeant when he’d shown up. The official story is that Will and Hannibal kidnapped Holden after Crawford helped Will escape from prison, with the intent of having a private final showdown away from the interfering eyes and ears and guns of the FBI, using Holden as leverage. Holden had managed to escape in their standoff: Crawford had fatally shot Hannibal, Will had shot Crawford, and Holden had shot Will with Crawford’s abandoned gun. Crawford had knocked over the oil lamp in his fall, igniting the blaze, and Holden managed to flee the house just as it started to collapse. The best lie is one based in truth.

“I don’t think we’ll be finding anything in there,” Shepard says, looking over his shoulder at the house. “Rain washed away anything remotely helpful, and the fire burned up the rest of it.”

“You’re sure they’re all dead?” Wendy asks. Her voice is perfectly measured, almost void of any emotion. Processing Crawford’s poor decision making, probably. 

Holden gives a solemn nod. “I’m sure. Sir,” he addresses Shepard, “I would like to recommend Agent Crawford for the medal of merit. No matter the circumstances, he saved my life.” That, and they won’t suspect anything of the guy who praised him. 

Shepard’s grateful to have been spared the messy task of firing Crawford, Holden can tell, because he straightens his spine and nods, mouth grim but eyes satisfied as he inspects the house. “It’ll take some doing, considering he inadvertently got a Bureau employee killed, but I think we can get that approved. What about you, Holden? You had a hand in taking them down, too.” 

“I’d rather keep my focus on the future, sir,” Holden says. 

“Well, you all proved yourselves more than competent in the face of extreme circumstances, and I daresay the efforts of the BSU were integral in our apprehension of Graham and Lecter. Something tells me you won’t have much resistance getting your toes in some doors in this future of yours.” 

Wendy, Bill and Holden share raised eyebrows, a small smile ticking at Bill’s mouth. 

“In the meantime, let’s get the fuck out of here before the news vans arrive. I’ve had enough of goddamn cannibals. And this goddamn mud.” Shepard tramps awkwardly away, grumbling under his breath as he goes. 

Their little trio lingers in silence, absorbing the significance of the moment. A decades-long cold case, wrapped up with a charred little bow, and Holden at its center, seemingly unchanged on the outside, but on the inside, nestled in his chest, a darkness— not new, just… _awakened_ — stirs. Restless. Ready. _Eager_. 

Eventually, Wendy sighs. “With the media circus this is going to attract, we’ll probably have our hands full these next few months.”

“Copycats will be crawling out of the walls like rats,” Bill agrees. 

Holden nods. “All trying to prove themselves the next in line.” He smiles at his partners, and the darkness in his chest coils, like a snake readying to spring. “But they don’t know what they’re up against.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me making the tags and realizing this technically counts as a kid fic: oh 
> 
> HOLY HECK WE DID IT Y’ALL. Thanks for coming along on this wild wild ride that consumed me entirely for the first four and a half months of 2020!!!! eternally grateful to the lovely Angie (DPHM (aelijah85)) for planting this little idea seed in the first place, way back on my first mindhunter fic <3 who knew this would grow to become my biggest work yet ahahah
> 
> my headcanon is Holden goes off to be a lil vigilante exacting some ~side justice~ on the bad guys he and Bill track down, and maybe over the years he gets more and more of a taste for the blood and starts to dabble in his own chesapeake ripper-esque designs, until eventually he’s head of the BSU team hunting for himself. Oof. if anyone wants to write that go ahead hahaha.
> 
> Like I said there’ll be a short lil prequel eventually cause I got WAY too invested in Holden’s childhood years but !! I’m gonna take a nap first lmfao
> 
> and lastly and yet again, I don’t own Hannibal and/or Mindhunter and I don’t profit from this fic, all the usual disclaimers so on and so forth yada yada yada i’ve been on ao3 too long i’m an old man


End file.
